Activist Group Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Audio Tracks from Spotify
An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared 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 start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.