A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
