What Spotify Just Did After a Group Pirated Its Music Files

Spotify has taken action after following reports that a group scraped its library with plans to make it publicly available as a “preservation archive.”

Reports surfaced early Monday (Dec. 22) that a “pirate activist group” had scraped metadata from Spotify’s music library and released it to the public. Billboard identified an open source search engine known as Anna’s Archive to be among the first to draw attention to the incident.

Anna’s Archive promotes itself as the “largest truly open library in human history.” The site claims that its efforts to shine a spotlight on the available Spotify music files is based in “preservation.”

Spotify Addresses Music File Scraping Incident

Hours after the incident was first reported, Spotify said it had tracked down user accounts behind the data breach.

“Spotify has identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” a spokesperson said in a statement provided to Euronews Next. “We’ve implemented new safeguards for these types of anti-copyright attacks and are actively monitoring for suspicious behavior.”

Spotify says that the only user-related data involved in the incident was connected to publicly available playlists that had been created by users.

What Was Included in the Spotify Breach?

Anna’s Archive claims it has access to 86 million of Spotify’s music files. The site says it was only a portion of Spotify’s 256 million music tracks.

Included with the music obtained in the breach are metadata and album art for each song.

It appears that the only part made publicly available to date is the metadata portion. Anna’s Archive says there are plans to release the music files and album art on its torrents page at a later date.

READ MORE:9 Rock + Metal Bands Who Pulled Their Music Off Spotify in 2025

What’s in Spotify’s Metadata?

Anna’s Archive claims to have analyzed the metadata obtained in the breach and has started to make its insights publicly available. That metadata allegedly included things such as a popularity score attached to the tracks and stream counts.

While it is believed the breach included less than 40 percent of Spotify’s total music library, Anna’s Archive says the songs obtained account for 99.6 percent of listens on the platform.

Here are some of the alleged high-level insights that have already been shared by Anna’s Archive:

• Albums released by year jumped from 8 million in 2023 to nearly 10.5 million in 2024.
• The music genre with the highest number of artists on Spotify is opera, followed by choral and chamber music.
• Full-length albums on Spotify most often feature 10 tracks.
• Nearly 2 million albums on Spotify are allegedly duplicated due to things such as updated versions or releases under a different license
• The site also claims that songs on Spotify are most often in the musical key of C

Spotify Breach Comes During Year When Artists Are Leaving the Service

Spotify has made headlines in 2025 due to multiple acts choosing to remove their music from the platform. At least nine rock and metal bands have left Spotify since the beginning of the year, including:

• King Gizard and the Lizard Wizard
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor
• My Bloody Valentine

See the full list of rock and metal bands who left Spotify in 2025 here.