Activist Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify
An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened 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 great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
