Spotify hit by major breach as activist group posts the streamer’s entire music library online

Spotify is “actively monitoring for suspicious behaviour” after the major heist.

Spotify is dealing with a major breach after activist group Anna’s Archive claimed to have uploaded almost all of the platform’s music library online for free, including hundreds of terabytes of tracks and metadata scraped from the service.

Activist collective Anna’s Archive claimed over the weekend that it has created a vast backup of Spotify’s music files and metadata — a haul it says totals around 300TB and represents “99.6% of all listens” on the platform. The group said it organised the scraped material by artist popularity and insisted the project was carried out in the name of long‑term cultural preservation.

According to Anna’s Archive, the data dump spans 256 million tracks, 58 million albums and more than 15 million artists. In a blog post, the group 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.”

The collective argued that existing preservation efforts fall short, claiming they focus too heavily on major artists and rely on audiophiles whose emphasis on ultra‑high‑quality files makes large‑scale archiving harder. Calling for donations and help seeding the torrents, Anna’s Archive added: “With your help, humanity’s musical heritage will be forever protected from destruction by natural disasters, wars, budget cuts, and other catastrophes.”

Spotify pushed back on Monday (22.12.25), confirming it had taken action against the accounts involved.

A statement read: “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 behaviour.”

The streamer also reiterated its stance on piracy, adding: “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.”