Advocacy Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Audio Tracks from the Streaming Giant
An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary 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 Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
