Advocacy Group Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said 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 distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
