Advocacy Group Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Music Files from Spotify
A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
