An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing 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 listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
