Activist Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Music Tracks from Spotify
A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally 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 information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea 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, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
