[HN Gopher] Spotify reportedly investigating Anna's Archive's sc...
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Spotify reportedly investigating Anna's Archive's scraping of their
library
Previously: _Backing up Spotify_ -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46338339 - Dec 2025 (634
comments)
Author : ikamm
Score : 40 points
Date : 2025-12-22 16:50 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.billboard.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.billboard.com)
| ikamm wrote:
| Previously - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46338339
| dang wrote:
| We'll add that to the toptext. Thanks!
| firloop wrote:
| I wish Spotify welcomed or collaborated with these archival
| initiatives. Anna's Archive does not compete with Spotify in any
| way.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| They can't, their overlords would be very unhappy with it.
| Record industries are heavy in on DRM.
| gpm wrote:
| Are they really? Nearly every song is uploaded by it's
| creator to YouTube which has no DRM at all...
| rendaw wrote:
| It's probably up to the publishers, not them.
|
| I buy my music, but at the same time I respect that Spotify is
| a bit more unified than any of the 100 video streaming services
| that don't have the one thing I want to watch.
| o_____________o wrote:
| Simply sharing metadata, related artists, genres, etc would
| create a pretty interesting ecosystem[1].
|
| [1]: https://everynoise.com/
| piva00 wrote:
| Every Noise was created by a former Spotify employee.
| vintermann wrote:
| He's a former Spotify employee now, but he was a Spotify
| employee when he made it. I think it hasn't been updated
| since he lost his data access.
|
| I have a lot of respect for Glenn McDonald for spam
| fighting all these years on Spotify, but we can go better
| than PCA for mapping music these days. Any neural embedding
| model is going to produce more meaningful axes. In fact
| Spotify had an intern who did just that, just before the
| launch of Discover Weekly: Sander Dieleman. Along with
| Aaron van den Oord he was snapped up by Deepmind after
| their Spotify internship. Those two guys were (and are)
| wildly good at what they do.
| tene80i wrote:
| Not even in the "providing a way to get music" way?
| nemomarx wrote:
| A big database that contains every song is pretty different
| from a recommendation system, web streaming, playlists, etc.
| Someone could use the dump to create something like that ofc,
| but the database itself isn't really the interesting thing
| Spotify offers.
| tene80i wrote:
| True, but feature parity isn't required for competition.
| Plenty of subscribers will just be listening to what they
| know they want to listen to, and for them a giant DB of
| music is absolutely sufficient.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I wish Spotify welcomed or collaborated with these archival
| initiatives.
|
| Spotify licenses the music in their library under specific
| terms. They don't own it. They can't just decide to give out
| freely on their own terms.
|
| > Anna's Archive does not compete with Spotify in any way.
|
| I think HN often underestimates the breadth of casual piracy
| among the general public who want to avoid paying $10/month for
| a service. There are already numerous tools to stream TV shows
| and movies from torrents on demand. I have no doubt the same
| will appear for a giant archive of Spotify music. A lot of
| people will jump at any chance to cancel their Spotify
| subscription if they can get close to the same access for free.
| firloop wrote:
| I doubt such a tool would be allowed in the major mobile app
| stores. The library of music isn't the product.
| ragazzina wrote:
| Stremio is on the App Store and can be used with a debrid
| service.
| vablings wrote:
| Fuck those licensing terms. They are the exact reason I cant
| make a Soundcloud notification bot for discord that is within
| the rules of the ToS. I sent them an email asking for an API
| key and basically got told no, license holders rule our
| world.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| They're all for the rules, now.
|
| How many people remember how Spotify... uhhh... "seeded" its
| music database at the start? (There's a hint in my question.)
| geraldmcboing wrote:
| also: "Musicians might note that 87% of tracks will now
| receive the same payment from Anna's Archive as they do
| from Spotify: zero."
|
| https://dadadrummer.substack.com/p/anti-copyright-
| extremists
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Spotify's (and the other huge streamers) main selling points
| are its catalogue, it's recommendations/auto playlists. Other
| features like steaming quality, UI, and network effects are
| also at play.
|
| Even the metadata is a huge proprietary data dump. Not sure how
| you think apple, Google, Amazon or an upstart budget streaming
| service couldn't use this to better compete against Spotify.
| maxloh wrote:
| I don't think music producer would agree to that. Spotify would
| likely lose contracts even if they simply opted for silence.
| twostorytower wrote:
| Anna's archive offers to share their data for AI training (in
| exchange for donations), so that's certainly something the
| record labels want control of. https://annas-archive.org/llm
| thenthenthen wrote:
| I am flabbergasted by the comments here, Spotify started with
| pirated music and now invests in the military.
|
| https://torrentfreak.com/how-the-pirate-bay-helped-spotify-b...
|
| And
|
| https://djmag.com/news/spotifys-daniel-ek-leads-eu600-millio...
| veeti wrote:
| It is actually a good thing to invest in blowing up fascists,
| especially in the context of an ongoing land invasion.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| If the fascists don't blow up the anti-fascists first.
|
| An eye for an eye, leaves us all blind.
| oblio wrote:
| Yes, of course, because as we all know:
|
| 1. Appeasement was a big success.
|
| 2. Fascists are known for having balanced personalities
| that at some point have enough and don't want more.
| josfredo wrote:
| To me it is the "in any way" at the end. I can't possibly
| understand the blind desire to distort reality by using mere
| words.
| firloop wrote:
| Maybe I was too hyperbolic, but when I read the original
| Anna's Archive announcement post, I appreciated their
| dedication to archiving content that may be lost one day.
| They called the effort "Backing up Spotify" and emphasized
| the good that opening the data could do. It's not about
| enabling piracy.
|
| Following Anna's logic, I was calling on Spotify to stop
| "investigating" archivists. Spotify could instead be engaging
| constructively here, with Anna's Archive, Internet Archive,
| or other groups.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I was looking for a song recently and can't find it. The
| artist was banned from YouTube and looks like they took
| their album off Spotify. An archive like this is good for
| preserving stuff from smaller artists like that
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Anti scraping measures are making it more difficult to use the
| web. I can't load a single GitHub pull request without being
| accused of botting.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I can't load a single GitHub pull request without being
| accused of botting.
|
| The only time I encountered this was after a power outage when
| my ISP's DHCP server handed me a new IP that was tainted. It
| felt like every major website was suddenly full of captchas.
|
| Eventually I had to unplug the router for 24 hours until the
| ISP let go of my DHCP reservation. When I reconnected it gave
| me a new IP and the problems went away.
| udave wrote:
| wasn't spotify started out as a collection of pirated songs?
| somethings go in full circle I guess.
| glitcher wrote:
| And also being the successor to Napster, the irony is thick
| with this quote:
|
| "Since day one, we have stood with the artist community against
| piracy"
|
| Funny thing, I've met a lot of independent artists who don't
| care about piracy one bit. I have a feeling it's the record
| labels and large corporations, not the artists, making the
| biggest fuss over piracy.
| sosborn wrote:
| For an independent artist, exposure matters more than album
| sales as it leads to ticket sales.
|
| For large labels, exposure is a solved problem and album
| sales are all that matters.
|
| They are all trying to maximize revenue, they just have
| different ways of going about it.
| kotaKat wrote:
| It's only "fairness" when Spotify does it.
| int32_64 wrote:
| Convenience won.
|
| How many people are actually going to download a torrent client,
| navigate through some massive torrent file collection to check
| the files of the artists they want to download so they can upload
| mp3s to their phone over a USB cable like it's 2004 again, just
| so they can avoid paying Spotify?
| cakealert wrote:
| A sufficiently seeded torrent is a high latency static CDN.
|
| You just need a client that can make use of it.
|
| I'm not sure if anyone will be interested in making one
| however, you can already get a patched Spotify APK from the
| usual mobile piracy spaces that's good enough.
| Raed667 wrote:
| Wasn't popcorn-time basically video streaming backed by
| torrent ? Why can't it be the same for audio ?
|
| The metadata is 200 GB which can be easily indexed and could
| be made searchable, then you download only what you need
| madduci wrote:
| And specifically, not everybody owns a NAS with 300 TB
| capacity. At 30TB drive for almost 1000EUR, we are talking
| about 10-15000EUR.
|
| As mentioned in other stories, this is really welcomed by other
| big corps or LLM related companies
| lm28469 wrote:
| Most people won't listen to 10tb of unique tracks in their
| entire lives, let alone 30tb or 300tb... 1tb of music is
| about a full year of 24/7 unique tracks
| nickv wrote:
| Datahorder here, a 26tb drive is about $375, so I don't think
| your quote of 30tb drive prices make sense. You can get about
| 80tb for $1000
| realusername wrote:
| Great, so the copyright conglomerates have nothing to complain
| about if it's useless then.
| halJordan wrote:
| That's unnecessarily worst case. No one is seriously using a
| usb cable to upload mp3s. There are plenty of paid and free
| spotify clones anyone can throw up.
| breppp wrote:
| Probably a net positive for future open source music generation
| LLM models
| aiisimmoral wrote:
| Which means a net negative for humanity.
| breppp wrote:
| Depends, the camera killed painting and is a positive for art
| in my opinion
|
| It's not obvious that LLM generation won't create more
| interesting music experiences (for lack of non-marketing
| speak for self curated music)
| bopbopbop7 wrote:
| The camera did not kill painting. And how does comparing a
| camera to an LLM even make sense?
| butlike wrote:
| They're conflating the LLM to advancement by comparing
| LLM:Camera, when really cameras and paintings are two
| different things
| breppp wrote:
| Painting (portraits for example) as a profession largely
| disappeared, while art based on painting evolved
| (impressionism, cubism, etc) due to the camera.
|
| My point is that photography is essentially a simulacra
| of reality, yet it unexpectedly created its own art form
| and influenced existing ones. So will the use of LLMs for
| generation
| bopbopbop7 wrote:
| LLMs will not do what the camera did. LLMs have no anchor
| to reality like the camera, they simply optimize for the
| average. A camera is a whole new medium, an LLM is a
| statistical construction. Sorry to burst your AI bubble.
| LLMs will not be the new camera, they won't be a new
| programming language, and they won't be the new compiler.
| breppp wrote:
| I am not sure I agree, a camera on the surface of things
| is the most boring machine. It shows you what was already
| there. It is still can be the basis of several
| interesting art forms
|
| I don't see why this can't happen with AI, or at least I
| am not certain like you it can't happen
| metalman wrote:
| It might turn out that there are more portrait artists,
| brush in hand, working today than at any point in
| history, in real numbers. This is certainly true for
| riding horses, and most definitly for musicians. But as
| the sole sources of those services, that is no longer
| true, or as percentages of total's, but with 9 billion
| people, the internet, and a big of effort, almost
| anything is viable.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| The camera did not kill painting. There are tons and tons
| of painters still, lots of them use digital means like a
| tablet these days but it still absolutely exists.
| squigz wrote:
| > lots of them use digital means like a tablet these days
| but it still absolutely exists.
|
| Yes, because art evolves over time.
|
| As it very likely will with generative art.
|
| And even with that evolution, people still use paint, and
| people will still use instruments and make music the same
| ways we always have...
| _fzslm wrote:
| Arguably, the camera evolved painting because it expanded
| the idea of what it could be - that it could be more than
| the illustration of/"illusion" of reality.
|
| I think and have always thought the exact same thing will
| happen with generative AI.
| breppp wrote:
| Yes, which was the point I was trying to convey. However
| it did also kill the profession of painters (the craft in
| art vs craft). Which might unfortunately happen to the
| more commercial side of music
| bopbopbop7 wrote:
| Do you have any evidence of all these "killings" of the
| profession or are you just vibing?
| breppp wrote:
| _Photography had particularly dramatic effects on the
| livelihoods of painters who operated on the fringe of the
| mainstream. This included the portrait miniaturists,
| whose markets fell drastically, particularly after the
| introduction of the multi-pose and cheap cartes de visite
| in the mid-1850s. Many gave up, while others turned to
| colouring photos [25]. Some painters of sentimental genre
| scenes were also particularly affected, as a result of
| the profusion of readily available photographic genre
| works, often composed in a painterly or "pictorial" style
| [26]. This was sometimes due not to the public's
| preference for the photographic version, but simply
| because a particular subject matter lost its appeal to
| painters and their clients once photography entered the
| scene [27]. In addition, the introduction of "half-tone"
| photography in the 1880s also initiated a slow decline in
| the market for newspaper and magazine illustrators [28]._
|
| Much more here:
| https://www.artinsociety.com/pt-1-initial-impacts.html
|
| https://www.barnesfoundation.org/whats-on/early-
| photography
| bopbopbop7 wrote:
| Nice wall of text, which part of that says painters jobs
| were killed?
|
| Or did you just read the title of the second article and
| not realize it's not being literal but capturing the
| anxiety of the painters in the 19th century?
| breppp wrote:
| I think the first article which is highly recommended
| (where the excerpt comes from) goes over subsequent
| effects on the profession. The second one goes over the
| different genres that disappeared, and concerns less with
| the artists themselves
|
| Apart from that our interaction seem overly emotional for
| me so I'd leave it as that
| bopbopbop7 wrote:
| So nothing about killing the profession, got it, so we
| were just vibing.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Correspondingly AI expanding the idea of what it means to
| think and therefore what it means to be human.
|
| By extension then also what it means to interact with
| other humans as we become more used to interacting with
| AIs, our interactions with each other will change.
|
| Along with these improvements, depending on which side of
| the fence you stand, the releasing of humans to focus on
| consumption while AI produce the triggers for our
| consumption, i.e., the advertising.
|
| AI is moving into far more spaces of human activity than
| the camera ever did. But that could also be because
| painting wasn't such a broadly practiced activity as
| thinking seems to be.
| freejazz wrote:
| >Depends, the camera killed painting and is a positive for
| art in my opinion
|
| Have you been to a contemporary art museum?
| breppp wrote:
| It killed realist art and it greatly reduced the "market"
| of available paintings, which back then was really a
| market, art was usually commissioned for the same reasons
| you take a photograph today
| freejazz wrote:
| You could have just said "no" or maybe admitted that
| "killing" painting was overblown, or maybe that it was
| not an accurate descriptor at all if you're argument is
| that it just "changed" painting.
| breppp wrote:
| I don't do semantics arguments because they don't help
| anyone learn anything
|
| It largely killed an industry which was everywhere, sure
| there are still paintings and it's a primer art form. The
| number of paintings commissioned and number of painters
| fell drastically since the 19th century to the point I am
| willing to guess you have never had your portrait taken,
| something that was common place in the equivalent pay
| grades of today tech workers. Regarding the art form it
| is also arguably less important in people's life then it
| used to be (while museums still exist), However most
| music today is still mostly a profession rather than pure
| art for the sake of art
|
| We can continue discussing whether the word kill is a
| metaphor or must be used only for a zero or one situation
| but I don't think that's interesting enough compared to
| the actual topic
| lm28469 wrote:
| > It's not obvious that LLM generation won't create more
| interesting music experiences
|
| It's very obvious that it's polluting and/or killing
| everything it touched so far though
| breppp wrote:
| it's an automatic bullshit machine so essentially it
| creates cliches as an automatic process
|
| this doesn't mean this can't be controlled by someone
| talented
| lm28469 wrote:
| We should give everyone live grenades, someone talented
| might do something cool, maybe, eventually, who knows
| right ?
| Raed667 wrote:
| I'm hoping that this metadata leak can revive projects like
| https://everynoise.com
|
| Spotify (and netflix etc..) have become very hostile to exposing
| their catalogue over API, so i'm glad they've gotten open sourced
| :)
| mystraline wrote:
| Oooh, scary. "Investigations!"
|
| This is a archivalist institution that actively ignores
| "copyright" to further the art and science of our shared media
| legacy.
|
| And frankly, public libraries would absolutely be deemed illegal
| if they were made 10 years ago. (And it was only because rich
| people like Rockefeller wanted to wash their actual history with
| a social-happy persona.)
| puppycodes wrote:
| long live anna's archive.
|
| a true gift to humanity.
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