Spotify disables accounts tied to alleged copying of its music catalog
Spotify said it disabled user accounts involved in unlawfully copying large portions of its music catalog after a group claimed it had backed up most of the platform’s content.
“Spotify has identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping. We’ve implemented new safeguards for these types of anti-copyright attacks and are actively monitoring for suspicious behavior,” a Spotify spokesperson told Gizmodo on Monday.
“Since day one, we have stood with the artist community against piracy, and we are actively working with our industry partners to protect creators and defend their rights,” the spokesperson added.
The statement followed a blog post published by Anna’s Blog, which is linked to Anna’s Archive, an online project known for hosting and distributing large collections of copyrighted books, academic papers, and other digital media.
The post claimed the archive includes metadata for roughly 256 million tracks, covering an estimated 99.9% of Spotify’s catalog, along with about 86 million music files representing around 99.6% of listens.
According to the blog post, the data is distributed across torrents totaling just under 300 terabytes and is grouped by popularity. The archive is described as a “preservation archive” intended to be fully open and easily mirrored, with a stated cutoff date of July 2025 for most releases.
The post said the group discovered a method to scrape Spotify “at scale” and framed the effort as an attempt to preserve music in case of future loss due to disasters, conflicts, or funding cuts. A volunteer identified as “ez” wrote that the project aims to protect what it described as humanity’s musical heritage.
Spotify did not comment on the specific claims about the size, intent, or completeness of the archive.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
