An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated 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 listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing 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 “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear 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.
