An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released 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 claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service 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 Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research 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 regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
