Activist Group Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Music Files from the Streaming Giant
An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.