An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
