Nearly entire Spotify catalogue scraped by shadow library group

STOCKHOLM: An activist group has claimed to have scraped tens of millions of tracks from Spotify, raising fresh concerns over copyright abuse and the use of pirated content to train artificial intelligence systems.

Anna’s Archive, a group known for linking to pirated books, said it had extracted 86 million audio files from Spotify along with 256 million rows of metadata, including artist and album information. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks and has over 700 million users worldwide, said the data did not represent its full catalogue.

As per a Guardian report, the Stockholm-based streaming firm said it had “identified and disabled” user accounts involved in unlawful scraping. An internal investigation found that a third party had scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass digital rights management to access some audio files. 

The company added that it did not believe the music had yet been released publicly. Anna’s Archive, however, said the files would eventually be shared via torrents as part of what it described as a “preservation archive” for music, claiming the material covered 99.6 per cent of all music listened to by Spotify users.

Spotify said it had introduced new safeguards against “anti-copyright attacks” and was actively monitoring suspicious behaviour. The episode adds fuel to an intensifying global debate over copyright, as artists and creators push back against AI firms trained on vast quantities of unlicensed material.