An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released 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.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
