Advocacy Group Claims to Have Extracted Millions of Audio Tracks from Spotify
A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network 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 “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence 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 matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
