A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said 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 means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added 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 creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
