An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released 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 asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
