A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
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 develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
