Did Someone Just Pirate Spotify? Massive Library Scrape Sparks Alarm

Spotify is dealing with a major headache after reports emerged that a pirate activist group has allegedly scraped vast chunks of the streaming giant’s music library and begun sharing the data online.

According to claims published by Anna’s Archive, more than 86 million audio files and 256 million rows of track metadata were accessed, totalling an eye-watering 300 terabytes. While the group says its motivation is “music preservation”, critics warn the scrape could theoretically allow people to build their own DIY, offline version of Spotify – copyright law permitting (and that’s a big permitting).

As of Sunday (December 21), Anna’s Archive reported that only metadata has been publicly released, not the full audio files themselves. Still, the group claims it discovered a way to scrape Spotify “at scale,” positioning the project as part of a broader mission to archive and preserve cultural material.

Spotify has since confirmed it’s investigating the incident. In a statement shared with Billboard, a company spokesperson said: “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.”

Not everyone’s buying the “just preservation” framing, though. Yoav Simmerman, CEO and co-founder of media-tech startup Third Chair, called the situation “insane”, warning that with enough storage and a personal streaming server like Plex, someone could theoretically recreate a personal, free version of Spotify containing music up to 2025. “There is no putting this back in Pandora’s box,” he added.

To put the scale into perspective, Simmerman noted the scrape is reportedly 37 times larger than MusicBrainz – one of the biggest open-source music archives in existence, which hosts around five million unique tracks.

Anna’s Archive, which typically focuses on books and academic papers, acknowledged music isn’t usually its lane – but argues that preserving recorded music still falls under its broader goal of safeguarding “humanity’s knowledge and culture”. The group also conceded Spotify doesn’t contain all music, but described it as “a great start.”

For now, there’s still plenty of unanswered questions – including whether artists who’ve recently pulled their music from Spotify amid backlash over CEO Daniel Ek’s investments in AI military technology were included in the scrape.

What’s clear, though, is that this is one of the largest alleged data grabs the streaming world has ever seen, and the fallout is only just beginning.

Further Reading

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