An activist group has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly 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 pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
