Pirate activist group Anna’s Archive says it has scraped the entirety of Spotify’s music library, and plans to release it through torrents.
Spotify has around 256 million tracks, and the Anna’s Archive collection contains metadata for an estimated 99.9% of them. The group archived approximately 86 million music files, accounting for roughly 99.6% of all listens, with a total size of nearly 300 terabytes. So far, only metadata has been released, not any actual music.
“This Spotify scrape is our humble attempt to start such a ‘preservation archive’ for music,” the group wrote. “Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start.”
Spotify told TechCrunch that it has identified and disabled the user accounts involved in the scraping.
“We’ve implemented new safeguards for these types of anti-copyright attacks and are actively monitoring for suspicious behavior,” a Spotify spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Since day one, we have stood with the artist community against piracy, and we are actively working with our industry partners to protect creators and defend their rights.”
Anna’s Archive says it normally focuses on text, like books and papers, but its mission to “preserve humanity’s knowledge and culture doesn’t distinguish among media types.”
