Activist Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Millions of Audio Tracks from Spotify
A digital rights group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data 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 culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister 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 right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.