Anna’s Archive, known primarily as a repository for free books, has taken a bold step into music, claiming to have backed up Spotify, which includes 86 million songs, along with their metadata.
This movement, which could be considered one of the largest music thefts in history, has been facilitated through torrents, calling into question the security of streaming platforms.
According to the organization, this copy represents 37% of Spotify’s total catalog, which, interestingly, accounts for 99.6% of the plays on the platform.
A robbery that will resonate in history
Although this large volume of musical content includes only 210,000 songs that exceed a popularity index of 50%, a phenomenon known as “long tail” reveals that more than 70% of the songs barely reach 1,000 plays. This indicates that music consumption is concentrated in a small number of popular tracks.
The extracted metadata provides valuable information about the duration, the most popular genres, and the existence of duplicates, which can be useful for market studies interested in current music trends.
Anna’s Archive plans to distribute this data through files in several deliveries, starting with the metadata and subsequently organizing the music by popularity.
In light of this situation, Spotify has launched an investigation to try to mitigate the impact of data scraping, deactivating accounts suspected of being involved in illegal activities. As protective measures intensify, there remains uncertainty about how this case will unfold and what the future of access to music on digital platforms will be.