Spotify’s Music Library Has Been Scraped And Posted Online by A Pirate Activist Group

Over 86 million audio files from Spotify have allegedly been scraped and posted online by a pirate activist group. The group has shared that their motivations are music preservation; however, some say this could enable individuals to build their own free version of Spotify.

A pirate activist group has reportedly scraped and released metadata from Spotify and is currently sharing the streaming platform‘s files via peer-to-peer (P2P) torrent networks.

According to Anna’s Archive, the breach allegedly includes 256 million rows of track metadata and 86 million audio files, totalling approximately 300 terabytes. As of Sunday (Dec. 21), the report indicates only metadata, not music files, have been released.

A representative from Spotify would share a statement to Billboard earlier today, writing: “An investigation into unauthorised access identified that a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM to access some of the platform’s audio files. We are actively investigating and mitigating the incident.”

In the blog post on Anna’s Archive, the site admits that it had discovered a way to scrape Spotify at scale. “We saw a role for us here to build a music archive aimed at preservation,” said the website.

However, Yoav Simmerman, CEO/co-founder of Third Chair – a startup that uses AI to build legal tools for media companies – would react to Anna’s Archive’s report on LinkedIn, calling it “insane.”

“Anyone can now, in theory, create their own personal free version of Spotify (all music up to 2025) with enough storage and a personal media streaming server like Plex. The only real barriers are copyright law and fear of enforcement.”

While Zimmerman speculates that the blog and affiliated groups will be taken down quickly, he believes the damage is already done, as the data is circulating on P2P networks, and admits, “There is no putting this back in Pandora’s box.”

The co-founder would also note that this recent scraping is 37 times larger than the previous open-source effort to archive music, MusicBrainz, which contained around five million unique tracks.

While Anna’s Archive admitted it usually focuses on books and papers, its blog post stated that music preservation is part of its mission of “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.

The scrape covers only music up to 2025 and does not include the entire music streamer’s library. It’s also unclear whether the scraping includes artists who have since left the platform due to the recent boycott stemming from CEO Daniel Ek’s investments in AI military technology.

As the blog post would admit, “Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start.”