Spotify has disabled multiple user accounts after an open-source group claimed it scraped millions of songs and related data from the music streaming platform. The move comes after Anna’s Archive published files over the weekend containing metadata and audio for 86 million tracks, triggering concerns around Spotify scraping and copyright enforcement.
In a statement shared with The Cyber Express Spotify scraping, company confirmed that it identified and shut down user accounts involved in unlawful scraping activities. The company said it has also introduced new safeguards to prevent similar incidents in the future.
“Spotify has identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” a Spotify spokesperson said.
“We’ve implemented new safeguards for these types of anti-copyright attacks and are actively monitoring for suspicious behavior. Since day one, we have stood with the artist community against piracy.”
Spotify Says Spotify Scraping Was Not a Hack
Spotify clarified that the Spotify scraping incident did not involve a breach of its internal systems. According to the company, the people behind the dataset violated Spotify’s terms of service over several months by using stream-ripping techniques through third-party user accounts.
“They did this through user accounts set up by a third party and not by accessing Spotify’s business systems,” the spokesperson said, adding that Anna’s Archive did not contact Spotify before releasing the files.
The company stressed that this Spotify scraping case should not be classified as a hack, but rather as systematic abuse of user access, which falls under unlawful scraping and copyright violation.
Anna’s Archive Claims “Preservation” Motive
Anna’s Archive, which describes itself as the “largest truly open library in human history,” published a blog post explaining its decision to expand beyond books and research papers into music. The group said it discovered a method of Spotify scraping at scale and saw an opportunity to build what it calls a “preservation archive” for music.
“Sometimes an opportunity comes along outside of text. This is such a case,” the group wrote, arguing that its goal is to preserve cultural content rather than profit from it.
The released dataset includes a music metadata database covering 256 million tracks and a bulk archive of nearly 300 terabytes containing 86 million audio files. According to Anna’s Archive, these tracks account for roughly 99.6% of all listens on Spotify.
Data Spans Nearly Two Decades of Music
The scraped files cover music released on Spotify between 2007 and July 2025. The group also released a smaller dataset featuring the top 10,000 most popular songs on the platform.
Using the scraped data, Anna’s Archive highlighted streaming trends, noting that the top three songs on Spotify—Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather,” Lady Gaga’s “Die With a Smile,” and Bad Bunny’s “DtMF”—have more combined streams than tens of millions of lesser-known tracks.
While Anna’s Archive framed the release as a cultural archive, copyright holders and technology companies have consistently challenged the group’s activities.
A History of Copyright Violations
Anna’s Archive emerged shortly after the 2022 shutdown of Z-Library, a massive online repository of pirated books. Following Z-Library’s takedown, the group aggregated content from several shadow libraries, including Library Genesis, Sci-Hub, and the Internet Archive.
The platform is banned in multiple countries due to repeated copyright violations. As of December, it reportedly hosts more than 61 million books and 95 million academic papers. In November, Google removed nearly 800 million links to Anna’s Archive following takedown requests from publishers.
Spotify Reinforces Anti-Piracy Measures
Spotify said it is actively monitoring for suspicious behavior and working with industry partners to protect creators’ rights. The company reiterated its stance against piracy and emphasized that Spotify scraping undermines both artists and the broader music ecosystem.
As streaming platforms continue to grow, incidents like this highlight the ongoing tension between open-access movements and copyright enforcement in the digital music industry.
