A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing 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 ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
