An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data 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 frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
