Spotify confirms mass music scraping as activist group claims access to 86 million tracks

An activist group has claimed it scraped a massive portion of Spotify’s music library and plans to distribute the files publicly.

According to the group, the archive includes around 86 million audio files and more than 256 million rows of metadata, ranging from artist names to album information. The total size of the dataset is estimated at roughly 300 terabytes.

Behind the operation is Anna’s Archive, a group known for large-scale digital archiving projects. The activists say the collection represents nearly all music actively listened to on Spotify and is intended to be distributed via peer-to-peer torrent networks. While Spotify hosts more than 100 million tracks in total, the group argues that its archive covers what it calls “99.6% of all music actually consumed by users.”

Anna’s Archive frames the effort as a cultural preservation project rather than a commercial piracy scheme. The group describes its mission as safeguarding humanity’s digital heritage and has openly stated its intention to make the music available to the public.

“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” the group said in a statement.
“With your help, humanity’s musical heritage will be forever protected from destruction by natural disasters, wars, budget cuts and other catastrophes.”

Spotify has confirmed that an incident occurred but disputes the framing of a full library leak. The company says the scraping was carried out through user accounts, not through a breach of its internal systems.

In a statement issued after the reports surfaced, a Spotify spokesperson said:

“Spotify has identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping. 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, and we are actively working with our industry partners to protect creators and defend their rights.”

The company also emphasized that the leaked material does not represent its entire catalog.