Activist group scraps millions of songs from Spotify, probes underway
The group, Anna’s Archive, said in a blog post that it has scraped 86 million music files from Spotify in an effort to create a ‘preservation archive’
Spotify is investigating an incident where an activist group claimed it had copied a vast share of the platform's music catalogue, raising fresh questions about copyright and the growing appetite for data in the AI industry.
The group, Anna's Archive, says it has scraped 86 million music files from Spotify, along with 256 million rows of metadata. That includes artist names, albums and track details. Spotify hosts more than 100 million tracks and said the material taken does not cover its full library.
Spotify said it had identified and shut down accounts involved in unlawful scraping. It added that a third party had accessed public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass digital rights management in order to reach some audio files. The company said it did not believe the music had been released yet.
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Anna's Archive is best known for sharing links to pirated books. In a blog post, it said the music collection was intended as a "preservation archive". The group claimed the files represented almost all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared using torrent technology.
The claim has drawn attention from the technology sector. Observers say such a trove could be valuable for training AI systems.
Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and copyright campaigner, told The Guardian that pirated material was already widely used in AI development. He warned that the scraped music would likely be used in the same way.
Spotify said it has added new safeguards and is actively monitoring for suspicious activity. The battle over who controls digital culture is far from settled.
