Activist Group Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Music Files from Spotify
A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
