Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Audio Tracks from Spotify
A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
