Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Extracted Millions of Audio Files from Spotify
An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said 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 carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
