Activist group claims to have scraped 86 million tracks from Spotify
Activist group Anna's Archive claimed to have scraped 86 million music files and associated metadata from Spotify by circumventing its DRM protections. Copyright advocates warned the stolen music could be used to train AI models, a practice they said was common in the industry.
What happened
Anna's Archive claimed to have scraped 86 million music files and 256 million rows of metadata from Spotify. The group used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections to access audio files, Spotify said.
Spotify confirmed it identified and disabled user accounts involved in unlawful scraping. The company said the leak did not represent its entire inventory of more than 100 million tracks and that it did not believe the scraped music had been released yet.
Reported impact
Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and copyright campaigner, said the stolen music would 'almost certainly' end up training AI models, noting that 'training on pirated material is sadly common in the AI industry'.
Index analysis
Anna's Archive stated the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and said it intended to share them via torrents as a 'preservation archive' for music.
Governance controls
Spotify said it had 'identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping' and conducted an investigation into unauthorised access.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.