Spotify Blocks Accounts After Piracy Group Claims Mass Music Scraping

Spotify has moved to disable accounts linked to a piracy activist group after claims that millions of tracks and metadata were copied from its platform. The company said it acted swiftly once it identified activity violating its terms of service.

The group, calling itself Anna’s Archives, alleged in a blog post that it had backed up around 86 million Spotify tracks and metadata for nearly 256 million tracks. It described the activity as “scraping,” framing it as part of an effort to build an open “preservation archive” for music.

Spotify, however, rejected the narrative of a hack. The company clarified that there was no breach of its internal systems, but rather misuse of user accounts and automated tools to collect data at scale, prompting account suspensions.

The incident highlights a growing tension between digital preservation activists and commercial platforms. While activists argue that streaming services risk erasing cultural history if catalogs change or disappear, rights holders see such scraping as large-scale copyright infringement.

From an industry perspective, the claims raise questions about how securely streaming platforms protect content distributed across millions of endpoints. Even without a direct hack, automated extraction can expose vulnerabilities in access controls.

For artists and labels, the episode reinforces long-standing concerns about unauthorized copying in the streaming era, where music is widely accessible but tightly licensed.

Ultimately, the dispute underscores a broader debate: who should control the long-term preservation of digital culture—private platforms governed by contracts, or open archives operating outside traditional copyright frameworks.