A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio 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.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear 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.
