Spotify Disables Accounts After Open-Source Group Scrapes 86 Million Songs From Platform

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https://therecord.media/spotify-disables-scraping-annas

Spotify responded on Monday to an open-source group's decision to publish files over the weekend containing 86 million tracks scraped from the music streaming platform.

Anna's Archive, which calls itself the "largest truly open library in human history," said on Saturday that it discovered a way to scrape Spotify's files and subsequently released a database of metadata and songs.

A spokesperson for Spotify told Recorded Future News that it "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," the spokesperson said. "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 spokesperson added that Anna's Archive did not contact them before publishing the files. They also said it did not consider the incident a "hack" of Spotify. The people behind the leaked database systematically violated Spotify's terms by stream-ripping some of the music from the platform over a period of months, a spokesperson said.

They did this through user accounts set up by a third party and not by accessing Spotify's business systems, they added.

Anna's Archive published a blog post about the cache this weekend, writing that while it typically focuses its efforts on text, its mission to preserve humanity's knowledge and culture "doesn't distinguish among media types."

"Sometimes an opportunity comes along outside of text. This is such a case. A while ago, we discovered a way to scrape Spotify at scale. We saw a role for us here to build a music archive primarily aimed at preservation," they said.

"This Spotify scrape is our humble attempt to start such a 'preservation archive' for music. Of course Spotify doesn't have all the music in the world, but it's a great start."

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