An activist or pirate group has claimed that it scraped almost all the popular music library from the music streaming platform Spotify. It further claims that the operation to pirate the content is a “preservation” effort rather than a theft. Spotify says that it has shut down all the accounts tied to the specific activity. It labels the incident unlawful and harmful to the global artists.
How a pirate library scraped almost all the major tracks from Spotify
The big claim comes from a pirate library, Anna’s Archive . The library is branded as the largest digital open library. They say that they’ve discovered a method to scrape Spotify at scale. Further, the library claims that it downloaded just under 300 terabytes of data. This includes almost all the popular tracks listened to by users worldwide.
The pirated file includes about 86 million songs , roughly a third of the platform’s catalog. However, those files account for about 99.6 percent of listening activity. Moreover, they claim that the operation was done in the service of cultural preservation. They deny any theft allegations. While pirating the song, they used Spotify’s popularity metric to prioritize highly popular albums and tracks.
Anna’s Archive shares data figures and findings
Anna’s Archive has also begun analysing the data and sharing its findings. The figures show how listening is dominated by a tiny elite. The top 3 songs collectively outperformed the bottom 100 million tracks combined. Examples cited include Die With A Smile by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, Birds of a Feather by Billie Eilish, and DtMF by Bad Bunny. Each of these tracks had billions of streams on the platform.
In response, Spotify says that it disabled accounts responsible for the scraping. It has also added new safeguards to the platform. In an official statement, the streaming giant says that it stands with artists and industry partners against piracy and is continuously monitoring for suspicious activity.
