Pirate group claims large-scale scrape of Spotify music catalogue

Anna’s Archive, the open-source search engine linked to several large shadow libraries, has claimed that it scraped Spotify’s music catalogue at scale, collecting metadata for approximately 256 million tracks and archiving around 86 million songs as part of what it describes as a large preservation effort.

According to a blog post published by the group, the archive covers more than 15 million artists and over 58 million albums, with the total dataset amounting to just under 300TB. The group stated that it plans to make the music files publicly available for download in phases, starting with the most popular tracks.

The group informed that it identified a method to scrape Spotify at scale and decided to build a music archive primarily focused on preservation. It stated that while Spotify does not include every piece of music ever recorded, the platform represents a strong foundation for constructing a long-term cultural archive.

Anna’s Archive estimated that the 86 million songs already archived account for around 99.6 per cent of all listens on Spotify, despite comprising only about 37 per cent of the platform’s total catalogue. The group added that millions of additional tracks have yet to be archived.

Historically, Anna’s Archive has concentrated on text-based materials such as books, academic journals and research papers, citing their high information density. The group stated that its broader mission of preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture extends to music and other forms of media.

The legality of the project remains clear, with the scraping, hosting and distribution of copyrighted music without authorisation constituting a violation of intellectual property laws in most jurisdictions. Anna’s Archive acknowledged this position and stated that its actions are intended as a response to what it views as fragile, incomplete or commercially skewed approaches to cultural preservation.

The group argued that many existing music collections, whether physical or digital, tend to over-represent popular artists or depend on extremely large, high-fidelity files that are difficult to store at scale. It stated that its own archive prioritises breadth, storage efficiency and long-term accessibility, and claimed that the metadata it has compiled represents the largest publicly available music metadata database to date.

The group stated that the music files would be released gradually, ordered by popularity, and made available to users with sufficient storage capacity. It remains uncertain whether the archive will continue to be accessible or become the subject of legal action.