Advocacy Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Audio Files from Spotify
An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing 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 streamed 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.