An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed 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 committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
