Spotify Hack: 86 Million Music Files Stolen by Hacktivist Group
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Hackers from a hacktivist group called Anna’s Archive have stolen approximately 86 million music files from Spotify. The activists claim too possess nearly 300TB of music files and plan to release them to the public. They have already shared metadata of the files and will likely share the actual music files in early 2026. The activists do not demand ransom from Spotify nor seek monetary gain, but claim to be making an effort to “back up” Spotify’s music to preserve it by allowing anyone with enough disk space to “mirror” the files.
Key Takeaways
- Hacktivists are creating a massive unauthorized backup of popular music by scraping nearly 300TB of data from Spotify.
- Spotify was not asked to pay a ransom, nor was it given an possibility to patch the security loophole.
- The streaming platform stated that the scraping violates its user policy and reassured its 700 million users that the hackers breached no personal details.
- The music files might become public soon and could be used by anyone to train AI systems without the artists’ consent.
How Big is Spotify’s Music Catalog?
The Swedish audio streaming and media service provider is one of the largest digital music streaming companies in the world, alongside SoundCloud and youtube Music. Spotify has hundreds of millions of tracks, and the hackers claim to possess approximately 37% of all the songs Spotify has in its library. While this may sound like only one-third of the company’s song catalog, Anna’s Archive says it contains the music that accounts for about 99.6% of listen requests on the platform.
Is Spotify Okay with letting the Hackers “Preserve” Its Content, and Were User Details Affected?
To say the