An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
