An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think 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.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, 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.
