A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared 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 known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
