New lawsuit claims millions of tracks illegally copied from Spotify

A piracy case so massive it’s breaking calculators, with Spotify and the majors aiming to shut down Anna’s Archive—and floating a $13T settlement.

Spotify and the three major record labels have taken strong action against Anna’s Archive. They claim the shadow library is involved in one of the largest music piracy operations ever recorded. In a recently unsealed federal lawsuit, these companies accuse the network of copying and preparing to distribute vast amounts of the global recorded music catalog.

The plaintiffs allege that Anna’s Archive has scraped metadata for about 256 million tracks and copied around 86 million audio files from Spotify. They argue that this collection represents nearly all of the commercially available music on the platform. They frame the operation as industrial-scale copying instead of casual infringement.

Spotify, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group filed the case in the Southern District of New York. Judge Jed S. Rakoff has already become involved. The court granted a temporary restraining order followed by a preliminary injunction, effectively preventing Anna’s Archive from hosting or linking to the disputed recordings.

The injunction goes further by ordering domain registrars and hosting providers to block access to several Anna’s Archive domains and to keep records that might help identify those behind the sites. This marks a quick escalation, showing that the court views the allegations as both urgent and credible. 

What has drawn the most attention is the damage figure associated with the case. The lawsuit cites statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work infringed, suggesting a theoretical maximum of about $12.9 trillion. This staggering amount surpasses even national economies, although any final award would remain at the court’s discretion.

Anna’s Archive has previously described itself as a preservation effort to prevent obscure recordings from disappearing, but it has not publicly responded to the lawsuit. As the case progresses, it highlights a familiar conflict: artists are caught between huge platforms, aggressive enforcement, and a piracy battle where the numbers are becoming almost unbelievable.

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Kevin Moran

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