Activist Group Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken 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 its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
