A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
