Spotify Faces Unprecedented Piracy Claim as Activist Group Says It 'Backed Up' Millions of Tracks

Spotify has been thrown into disarray after a controversial piracy activist group known as Anna's Archive claimed to have scraped and 'backed up' a substantial portion of the streaming giant's music catalogue; a move that experts say could reshape the digital music landscape.

According to the group's announcement and multiple reports, the operation has produced a massive 300 terabyte archive of music files and metadata that is now circulating on peer-to-peer networks.

Explosive Claims from a Shadow Library

In a blog post published over the weekend, Anna's Archive, a controversial shadow library project best known for hosting pirated books and academic papers, announced that it has 'backed up Spotify' by scraping 86 million audio files and metadata for 256 million tracks from the music platform.

The group insists this represents around 99.6 per cent of all listens on Spotify and 99.9 per cent of track metadata, even if it does not cover the entire catalogue.

The total dataset is being distributed in bulk torrent files organised by popularity. Anna's Archive claims it prioritised tracks based on Spotify's own popularity metric so that the most-streamed songs are included in their original formats.

On its blog, the group framed the effort not as ordinary piracy, but as a cultural 'preservation archive' intended to safeguard music from loss due to platform changes, licensing expirations, or corporate decisions. It described this project as a 'humble attempt to start such a preservation archive for music' and said it could help protect the world's musical heritage.

Spotify's Response

The music streaming leader has publicly acknowledged the incident and confirmed that unauthorised scraping occurred. Billboard and other publications were told that the company's investigation found that 'a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections to access some of the platform's audio files'.

They also said it has identified and disabled the user accounts involved in the scraping and has implemented new safeguards to prevent similar attacks in the future.

Crucially, Spotify has not confirmed the exact scale of the breach claimed by Anna's Archive, instead stating only that a portion of its audio files and public metadata were accessed without authorisation. The company says there is no indication that private user information was compromised and that user accounts remain secure.

Industry Outrage and Legal Questions

The development has sent shock waves through the music industry. Artists, labels and copyright experts have condemned the leak, warning that freely available torrents of music files could fuel unauthorised use, including in AI training, and undermine the economics of streaming platforms.

Some commentators argue that the archive could make it technically possible for anyone with enough storage to create an unofficial 'free Spotify' of their own.

Anna's Archive itself has a well-documented history as a shadow library and pirate aggregator, originally launched to preserve books and scholarly content when Z-Library faced legal pressure. The group claims not to host content directly but to link to existing files using decentralised networks, a strategy designed to avoid take-down orders.

For now, listeners and industry insiders alike are watching anxiously as one of the largest music collections in history begins circulating outside the control of its legal owners. The question now is whether this bold claim of preservation will be seen as an act of cultural significance or yet another chapter in the ongoing battle between piracy and copyright enforcement.