Spotify has launched an internal investigation following claims by activist collective Anna’s Archive that it illegally scraped a vast portion of the platform’s music catalogue and associated data. The group alleges it has harvested approximately 86 million audio files along with 256 million rows of metadata, describing the effort as part of a long-term “preservation archive” intended to safeguard humanity’s musical heritage.
Responding to the claims, the Stockholm-based streaming giant said it had identified and disabled the user accounts involved, characterising the incident as an instance of “unlawful scraping.” Spotify stated that the activity relied on illicit methods designed to bypass its digital rights management (DRM) protections and gain unauthorised access to audio content. While Spotify hosts more than 100 million tracks and serves over 700 million users globally, the company emphasised that the alleged data extraction does not represent its entire music library and has not compromised the platform as a whole.
The incident has raised serious concerns among copyright advocates, particularly over the potential misuse of the dataset for training artificial intelligence models. Critics warn that access to such a large volume of high-quality, contemporary music could significantly accelerate the development of AI-driven music generation tools. Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and prominent campaigner for artists’ rights, noted that the use of pirated content for AI training has become “sadly common” across the industry.
Anna’s Archive, which has previously been linked to repositories of pirated books and academic material, defended its actions in a blog post, arguing that cultural works must be protected against loss caused by wars, natural disasters and funding cuts. The group claimed its collection represents 99.6% of all music streamed by Spotify users and indicated plans to distribute the files via torrent networks.
“Of course, Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” the group said, a statement likely to further inflame tensions between technology platforms, rights holders and digital preservation activists.