🔗 Share this article

An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.

Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development

Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.

A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.

“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.

The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.

Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns

The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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.

The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.

“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

AI Training and Copyright Debate

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.

“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.

The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.

The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.

Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.

Government Proposals and Reactions

In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.

A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.