An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
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 offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users 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,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
