Activist group says it has scraped 86m music files from Spotify

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/22/activist-group-says-it-has-scraped-86m-music-files-from-spotify

An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.

Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.

A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86m music files from Spotify and 256m rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100m tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.

The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, said it had “identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping”.

“An investigation into unauthorised access identified that a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management] to access some of the platform’s audio files,” said Spotify.

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blondebimboboi@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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- ITeeTechMonkey@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Ya this is sure the beginning of the end for them. They aren’t an “AI” company so the full force of the government will come after them now that they have been named in a mainstream publication.
  
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  - Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    They’re decentralized, though. Hammer them down and a mirror will pop right up. Clearly they are also willing to work with places that are out of reach of Western Copyright law as well, given their prior interactions with Deepseek’s development.
    
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- DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  My thoughts, too. Now, there will be a court case, and Anna’s will be shut down. Because, in court, money almost always wins.
  
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  - Mesophar@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s kind of ironic that a preservation focused organization didn’t have any sense of self-preservation. If they quietly scraped and archived songs over time and in the background, there never would have been any attention brought on them.
    
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  - rainwall@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    They have lost dozens of court cases in as many countries. They are still up.
    
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  - GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Seems unlikely that they will be successful in shutting it down. If that were the case, they would have been shut down over the books already.
    
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Sxan@piefed.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

… scraped 86m music files … Spotify, which hosts more than 100m tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.

“Neener neener, you only got 86%!”

“It could have been worse.”

“They didn’t get everything, so we win!”

LLMs will at least be well trained in Newspeak.

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- scintilla@crust.piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  According to the other article I read Spotify has about 256 million tracks. Not sure why guardian is saying over 100 million.
  
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  - msage@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Technically true
    
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roserose56@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
We only need 300TB iPod and we are done.

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jaschen306@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Is Anna’s located in the US?

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- Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Theoretically a node could be (since Anna’s is decentralized and not consolidated), but in practice I think it’s reasonable to believe no. Just accessible by US internet users and hosted somewhere outside the DMCA’s grip.
  
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  - jaschen306@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    That’s what I was wondering about. If the American government can get to them.
    
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- verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Not located anywhere- the archive is mirrored all over the world.
  
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  - douglasg14b@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yeah, but it’s still operated and organized by people, people who of they are within US jurisdiction be punished and made “an example of”. Effectively killing the archive by cutting off its organization.
    
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thesohoriots@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
All that lossy-ass bitrate music that sounds like a telephone underwater, shame

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- LodeMike@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  160kbps OPUS is okay. At that point the biases in the ADC and recording equipment matter more.
  
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- fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The funny thing from what I’ve read the got the alot of raw audio files too so the people torrent probably are getting higher quality versions then what Spotify transcodes too
  
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stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
My question is “Why?” Pretty much everything on Spotify is already available elsewhere in FLAC format good for archiving rather than Spotify’s bad lossy compression.

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bryndos@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Does "activist group" not have soulseek?
smh

Honestly thou i don't really know what a spotify is, sounds like a dogging app.

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Brewchin@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The same Anna’s Archive that allows free anonymous downloads that are throttled to the speed of a 1990-era modem unless you pay?

Yes, I’m sure preservation and social good is their goal. Definitely not about making money.

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- phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Any idea what it costs to reliably store this data, let alone have the bandwidth to upload it to others?
  
  This ain’t a cheap game, no matter what the intentions are. I have no problem with paid content because it costs money to have it there. I pay Spotify but I’d rather pay Anna’s archive
  
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  - Sl00k@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Not really on topic, but I recently swapped from Spotify to Qobuz and it’s been a pretty good experience if you’re interested in paying someone who’s not Spotify
    
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  - Zombie@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I’m just some random on the internet but I’d rather you didn’t pay Spotify. Here’s one example for why, among many.
    
    In November 2021, Prima Materia, an investment company cofounded by Ek and Spotify investor Shakil Khan, was announced as the lead investor in a €100 million fundraising round for Helsing, a European defense company that develops military strike drones and AI systems. Ek also joined Helsing’s board along with its co-founders Torsten Reil, Gundbert Scherf and Niklas Köhler.[171] In 2025, Ek’s firm increased its investment in Helsing, leading a €600 million funding round in the company that valued it at €12 billion.[172]
    
    Several artists have objected to Ek’s investments in defense technology. The German DJ and techno producer Skee Mask urged his nearly 17,000 Twitter followers not to give their “last penny to such a wealthy business that obviously prefers the development of warfare instead of actual progression in the music business.” According to Sameer Gupta, a percussionist based in Brooklyn, New York, “All that money that’s being taken from artists and musicians is being funneled to this,” referring to Helsing. “I don’t know a single musician who would ever say, ‘That’s the function of music.’”[173] In 2025, the bands Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Hotline TNT, Massive Attack, and Sylvan Esso removed their music from the streaming service over objections to Ek’s investment in Helsing.[174][175][176][177][178]
    
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify
    
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