An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
