An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed 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 method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
