Spotify has been hacked | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: This is something that popped up from Digital Musicnews dot com.

0:04 Speaker 1: Hackers scrape Spotify's entire library. I thought of this when

0:08 Speaker 1: I saw you know, we were talking earlier a little

0:10 Speaker 1: bit about Spotify and the importance of being on Spotify

0:14 Speaker 1: so that your music is discoverable, the term that we

0:16 Speaker 1: like to use in the industry. But hackers have scraped

0:19 Speaker 1: Spotify's entire library obtain three hundred terabytes worth of audio.

0:25 Speaker 1: Spotify says it has identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts.

0:32 Speaker 1: I hope they do a lot more than that. Just

0:35 Speaker 1: identifying and disabling those accounts is not going to fix

0:38 Speaker 1: the problem long term. I mean, if they did it once,

0:40 Speaker 1: they can do it again in theory. But it says

0:42 Speaker 1: here hackers say they've scraped Spotify's entire music library, compiling

0:47 Speaker 1: the metadata behind two hundred and fifty six million tracks

0:52 Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty six million tracks tied to over

0:55 Speaker 1: fifteen point four million artists profiles, and intend to make

1:00 Speaker 1: a massive amount of music available to torrent. Meanwhile, Spotify

1:05 Speaker 1: is acknowledged to the breach and confirmed that the culprit's

1:08 Speaker 1: accessed some of the platform's audio files. Some of the

1:13 Speaker 1: platforms audio files and quotes. So Spotify acknowledging I mean,

1:17 Speaker 1: you know, fifteen point actually two hundred and fifty six million,

1:22 Speaker 1: that's some of the platform's audio files. I wonder how

1:26 Speaker 1: many actual audio files do you ever wonder about that?

1:28 Speaker 1: Like how much actual music is on Spotify? How many

1:34 Speaker 1: audio files are on Spotify? Because we were talking about

1:37 Speaker 1: I remember a couple of years ago on the show

1:39 Speaker 1: now might have been two or three years ago, we

1:41 Speaker 1: were talking about how Spotify had announced that they were

1:45 Speaker 1: starting to remove some music from its platform because people

1:50 Speaker 1: were uploading you know, demos and really lo fi. I

1:54 Speaker 1: don't mean lo fi as in the style of recording.

1:58 Speaker 1: You know, you can you can record low fi music

2:00 Speaker 1: or music that sounds like it's supposed to be, you know,

2:03 Speaker 1: kind of like from another time even right, But I

2:06 Speaker 1: mean actual like low quality, like just poor recording quality music.

2:10 Speaker 1: People were just uploading, you know, stuff that they just

2:14 Speaker 1: just cheap demos that they'd made on their tape recorder

2:17 Speaker 1: or whatever, just uploading all of it to Spotify. And

2:21 Speaker 1: it got to a point where Spotify decided to go

2:23 Speaker 1: through and start and I don't know how they do it.

2:26 Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure they have I'm sure they have

2:28 Speaker 1: the technology to detect these things, but actually went through

2:31 Speaker 1: and started removing some of that stuff. Because you know,

2:35 Speaker 1: if you think about how much music is being uploaded

2:39 Speaker 1: to these platforms like Spotify every single day, every single day,

2:44 Speaker 1: all over the world, people are uploading music, and it's

2:47 Speaker 1: not like you know, I think we tend to think

2:49 Speaker 1: of it as sort of this this infinite thing, like

2:53 Speaker 1: there's just this, you know, because it's because it's audio.

2:58 Speaker 1: There's just this infinite amount of space to put all

3:01 Speaker 1: this because it's not they're not physical objects. It's audio files.

3:06 Speaker 1: So you can just put as many audio files up

3:09 Speaker 1: as you want and it doesn't matter how much room

3:11 Speaker 1: it takes up. But it actually does matter how much

3:13 Speaker 1: rooma takes up because you have to keep building, you

3:16 Speaker 1: have to keep building more storage for all this music.

3:18 Speaker 1: It still takes up space digitally, so you can't just

3:23 Speaker 1: let it be a free for all. Part of what

3:25 Speaker 1: made me remember that is because I remember at the

3:27 Speaker 1: time when we talked about it on the show, some

3:28 Speaker 1: people were upset and it was another reason to be

3:31 Speaker 1: mad at Spotify. I guess people were upset saying, well,

3:34 Speaker 1: how can they just go through and remove stuff. Well, yeah,

3:37 Speaker 1: it's a little bit. First of all, a little bit

3:39 Speaker 1: of quality control is not a bad thing. You know,

3:42 Speaker 1: if people are just you know, getting the band together

3:45 Speaker 1: and sticking a tape recorder in the middle of the

3:47 Speaker 1: room and then taking that taking that recording and uploading Spotify,

3:54 Speaker 1: you don't necessarily want that on your platform, right, something

3:57 Speaker 1: something like that, you know. And also there's there's abuses

4:01 Speaker 1: that goes on that go on, and you know, people

4:04 Speaker 1: stealing other people's music and uploading it, and there's all

4:07 Speaker 1: kinds of things going on. So you know, I'm not

4:09 Speaker 1: saying that you should never be mad at Spotify about anything,

4:14 Speaker 1: but you know, but they have a right to police

4:19 Speaker 1: their own platform too a little bit and make those decisions. Anyway,

4:24 Speaker 1: that was a little bit of a side street, But

4:25 Speaker 1: the point is apparently two hundred and fifty six million tracks,

4:30 Speaker 1: that's only part of how much music is actually on Spotify.

4:35 Speaker 1: So let's see. So there's an update here again. This

4:42 Speaker 1: is from Digitalmusicnews dot Com. An update as of the

4:47 Speaker 1: twenty second It says after this piece was published. Well, no,

4:50 Speaker 1: let's go back, We'll go back to the update after

4:52 Speaker 1: let's look at the original article. First. Okay, so, the

4:56 Speaker 1: allegedly responsible hackers, part of a self described nonprofit project

5:00 Speaker 1: called Anna's Archive, themselves, disclosed the data heist in a

5:05 Speaker 1: blog post. In that lengthy post, drawing from the metadata,

5:10 Speaker 1: covers hard stats concerning duration, stream volume, popularity, genre at

5:15 Speaker 1: release date, and more regarding straight audio, Anna's Archive indicated

5:21 Speaker 1: that it had quote archived around eighty six million music files,

5:26 Speaker 1: representing around ninety nine point six percent of listens and

5:32 Speaker 1: clocking in at a little under three hundred terabytes in

5:35 Speaker 1: total size. A while ago, we discovered a way to

5:39 Speaker 1: scrape Spotify at scale. For now, this is a torrents

5:43 Speaker 1: only archive aimed at preservation, but if there is enough interest,

5:47 Speaker 1: we could add downloading of individual files to Anna's archived unquote,

5:53 Speaker 1: the hackers communicated. That's interesting because when they say that

6:01 Speaker 1: it's only again this is from the hackers, When they

6:05 Speaker 1: say that it's aimed at preservation, it sounds like they're

6:11 Speaker 1: they're trying to present this as an altruistic endeavor. We

6:15 Speaker 1: want to make sure that nothing ever happens to this music.

6:18 Speaker 1: We want to make sure again, I'm not please, I'm

6:21 Speaker 1: not justifying what they did. Don't misunderstand me. I'm just

6:24 Speaker 1: saying that this sounds like this is what they're presenting.

6:27 Speaker 1: You know, we want to make sure nothing happens to

6:30 Speaker 1: this music, you know, because in theory Spotify can remove

6:34 Speaker 1: anything anytime it wants, or an artists can remove anything

6:36 Speaker 1: anytime it wants, and then where does it go? What

6:40 Speaker 1: if they just delete it and then that's it. It's

6:42 Speaker 1: just gone. It's not available anywhere else, right, So they're

6:45 Speaker 1: trying to preserve all this music. That's that's what That's

6:48 Speaker 1: what the hackers have communicated, it says, you're Unsurprisingly, Spotify

6:53 Speaker 1: and especially rights holders, have plenty to say about those plans,

6:58 Speaker 1: as noted by Third Chair where had Yayov Zimmerman Yahov Zimmerman. However,

7:06 Speaker 1: whatever takedowns and illegal actions follow, the damage is already done. Technically.

7:13 Speaker 1: Anna's archive claims that it doesn't host any copyrighted materials,

7:17 Speaker 1: instead purportedly indexing metadata that is already publicly available, direct

7:24 Speaker 1: hosting or not. Some of the project's supporters are lamenting

7:28 Speaker 1: the Spotify circumvention and the possibility that will quote ruin

7:32 Speaker 1: the actual important literary archive unquote by encouraging aggressive litigation.

7:38 Speaker 1: Zimmerman wrote, quote the data is circulating on P two

7:41 Speaker 1: P networks, and there is no putting the back, putting

7:45 Speaker 1: this back in Pandora's box. Anyone can now, in theory,

7:49 Speaker 1: create their own personal free version of Spotify All Music

7:54 Speaker 1: up to twenty twenty five with enough storage and a

7:57 Speaker 1: personal media streaming service like Plex. The only real barriers

8:01 Speaker 1: are copyright law and fear of enforcement unquote you know,

8:06 Speaker 1: and I'm sure I'm not the only one who this

8:08 Speaker 1: has occurred, to to whom this has occurred, you know

8:10 Speaker 1: what this reminds me of. We're going back. We're going back. Jeez,

8:18 Speaker 1: how many years? Thirty years, maybe twenty five years? Napster.

8:24 Speaker 1: This reminds me of Napster when Napster first became a thing,

8:29 Speaker 1: file sharing, peer to peer, file sharing online, and the

8:34 Speaker 1: whole music industry freaked out because all of a sudden,

8:37 Speaker 1: everything was free online through Napster. Now, obviously a lot's

8:42 Speaker 1: changed since then, and the music industry had to figure

8:45 Speaker 1: out ways to adjust to the new reality and the

8:48 Speaker 1: Internet and all of it. But when I see this,

8:56 Speaker 1: anyone can now in theory create their own personal free

8:59 Speaker 1: version of Spotify All Music up to twenty twenty five

9:02 Speaker 1: with enough storage, and a personal media streaming server like PLEX.

9:06 Speaker 1: The only real barriers are copyright law and fear of enforcement.

9:12 Speaker 1: Let's see, there's a little do we have time. Oh yeah,

9:19 Speaker 1: we have time. There's a little bit more here. Oh sorry, okay,

9:26 Speaker 1: here we go. Perhaps more pressingly, in the AI age,

9:30 Speaker 1: the massive collection of audio could theoretically be used to

9:34 Speaker 1: train generative generative models and fuel additional unauthorized sound alike outputs,

9:41 Speaker 1: a particularly significant issue if the involved platforms are based

9:45 Speaker 1: in countries with inadequate IP protections. I'm telling you, in

9:51 Speaker 1: some ways, this is napster all over again. This is

9:55 Speaker 1: napster in the AI age. It says here. One section

10:01 Speaker 1: of the Anna Archives site says, quote, it is well

10:05 Speaker 1: understood that lms, which is large learning models like you know, CHATCH,

10:10 Speaker 1: GPT and others that suck up all this information. Okay,

10:14 Speaker 1: it is well understood that lms thrive on high quality data.

10:19 Speaker 1: We have the largest collection of books, papers, magazines, et

10:24 Speaker 1: cetera in the world, which are some of the highest

10:27 Speaker 1: quality text sources. Unquote. According to the same site, Anna's

10:33 Speaker 1: archive promptly put out the metadata and with three hundred

10:38 Speaker 1: terabytes worth of audio files, releasing an order of popularity.

10:44 Speaker 1: In other words, the full extent of the episode's fallout

10:47 Speaker 1: remains to be seen. And as initially mentioned as Spotify

10:52 Speaker 1: confirmed the unauthorized access, but not where things go from

10:55 Speaker 1: here in a detailed light. In a detailed light statement, Yeah,

11:00 Speaker 1: they didn't really say much. The Spotify spokesperson said, quote,

11:04 Speaker 1: an investigation into unauthorized access identified that a third party

11:08 Speaker 1: scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM

11:14 Speaker 1: to access some of the platform's audio files. We are

11:17 Speaker 1: actively investigating the incident quote. And again, as I pointed

11:23 Speaker 1: out earlier, what is missing from that statement nothing about

11:30 Speaker 1: how we will prevent this from happening again.