A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast 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 artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.