Why Spotify’s Latest Problem Could Change Music Forever |
While the shadow library says it aims to preserve humanity’s culture, its pirated content has wider implications for the future of streaming.
BY MARÍA JOSÉ GUTIERREZ CHAVEZ, EDITORIAL FELLOW
Spotify’s library has become modern piracy’s latest treasure. Pirate activist group and shadow library Anna’s Archive claims to have “backed up” the world’s largest music streamer, and made Spotify’s music catalog publicly available.
The online hacking group—which claims to focus on content preservation, usually books and papers—allegedly scraped the majority of Spotify’s music files and metadata (album art and titles). Of Spotify’s 256 million tracks, Anna’s Archive scraped 99.9 percent of the metadata, and “archived” 86 million music files, prioritized by popularity. The group says it will release the actual music files in stages, also prioritized by........