An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired 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.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared 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 beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
