An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted 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 method of exchanging large data 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 describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
