Spotify has moved to contain a major piracy incident after an activist group claimed it had scraped and published nearly the platform’s entire music library online.
The alleged data haul totals around 300 terabytes and covers most of Spotify’s global catalog.
On Saturday, activist group Anna’s Archive said it had backed up Spotify’s music files and metadata, amounting to roughly 300TB of data. The group claimed the scrape represents 99.6% of all listens on the platform.
According to the group, the archive includes 256 million songs, 58 million albums, and music from 15.43 million artists. The files were reportedly distributed online and grouped by artist popularity.
Anna’s Archive described the action as an attempt to preserve the world’s musical heritage. In a blog post cited by Billboard, the group said Spotify’s catalog was “a great start” for a broader music preservation effort.
“This Spotify scrape is our humble attempt to start such a ‘preservation archive’ for music,” the group wrote, while acknowledging that Spotify does not host all music globally.
Criticism of existing preservation efforts
The group argued that current music preservation efforts are inadequate. It said most archives focus heavily on popular artists and are often maintained by audiophiles prioritizing high-quality formats that require large storage capacity.
Calling for donations and users to seed the torrents, Anna’s Archive claimed the archive could protect music from threats such as natural disasters, wars, budget cuts, and other disruptions.
Spotify responded swiftly to the claims, saying it had identified and disabled accounts involved in what it described as “unlawful scraping.” The company said it has introduced additional safeguards to counter similar attacks.
“Spotify has identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” the company said in a statement on Monday. It added that it is actively monitoring for suspicious behavior.
Firm reaffirms stance against piracy
Spotify emphasized its long-standing opposition to piracy and said it is working closely with industry partners to protect artists’ rights.
“Since day one, we have stood with the artist community against piracy,” the company said, stressing its commitment to defending creators and their work.
The incident highlights ongoing challenges faced by streaming platforms in protecting vast digital libraries. Large-scale scraping operations raise concerns not only about copyright enforcement but also about the security of platform infrastructure.
While Spotify did not disclose how long the scraping activity went undetected, the scale of the claimed data dump has drawn widespread attention across the music and tech industries.
