An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive 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 AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
