Hacktivist Group Creates Massive Open Music Archive from Spotify Scraping

What if streaming services disappeared? A hacktivist group claims to have a solution: scrape millions of songs and metadata to preserve music for future generations.

A Bold Attempt at Music Preservation

A shadowy collective associated with Anna's Archive, a site known for archiving media metadata, has announced that it has scraped approximately 300 terabytes of music data from Spotify. They aim to offer this collection as the world’s first “fully open” music preservation archive. The group states it has collected around 86 million music files, which they claim represent about 99.6% of Spotify's total listens.

“We saw a role for us here to build a music archive primarily aimed at preservation,” said Anna's Archive in a Saturday blog post.

The Scope and Limitations of the Archive

Despite the vast amount of audio files, the archive covers only about a third of Spotify’s total catalog of roughly 256 million tracks. The remaining two-thirds are represented solely through metadata, meaning the actual audio files for many tracks are not preserved. The group's focus is on high-priority, popular content, probably missing many less mainstream songs.

Preservation Goals and Controversies

Anna's Archive emphasizes its mission to preserve “humanity's musical heritage” against disasters, wars, and other catastrophes. However, critics point out several issues:

• The archive excludes a significant portion of less popular music.
• It currently plans to distribute files via torrents, risking unauthorized sharing.
• There’s ambiguity regarding how the files will be organized or made available—whether as one large archive or multiple smaller torrents.

The group's stated intent is preservation, but releasing music files freely risks encouraging piracy, especially since they hinted at offering individual downloads if there's sufficient interest.

Spotify’s Response and Scraper Detection

Spotify has responded by disabling the accounts involved in the scraping operation and implementing safeguards to prevent future attacks. A Spotify spokesperson told us:

“Spotify has identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping. We’re actively monitoring for suspicious behavior.”

The technical details of how the scrapers bypassed Spotify’s digital rights management protections remain unclear.

The Future of the Archive

Currently, only metadata for nearly all of Spotify's 256 million tracks is available on Anna's Archive. The group has expressed plans to release the actual music files, prioritized by popularity, in the future. Whether this will involve sharing individual tracks or whole archives remains uncertain.

Legal and Ethical Implications

While the group frames their project as a benevolent preservation effort, their methods are inherently illegal and considered piracy by Spotify and the broader music industry. The act of scraping and distributing copyrighted material without permission threatens artists' rights and industry profits.

“Since day one, we have stood with the artist community against piracy,” Spotify asserted.

Conclusion

This bold move highlights the challenges of digital preservation in the streaming era. While intended to safeguard musical heritage, the practical and legal hurdles remain significant. The open archive remains a work in progress, with its future uncertain amid ongoing legal and technological battles.

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Note: This article is a summary based on recent reports and does not endorse illegal downloading or copyright infringement.