Activist Collective Claims to Have Extracted Millions of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
