Advocacy Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Audio Tracks from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files 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 leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
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 copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
