A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models 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 Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
