Advocacy Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Millions of Music Files from Spotify
An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
A group 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 album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread 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 LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
