An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released 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.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, 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 artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
