Anna's Archive claims near-complete Spotify mirror: 300TB via torrents

One of the most expansive digital music archives to date has surfaced online. Anna’s Archive, previously known for safeguarding books and academic papers, says it has assembled an almost complete copy of Spotify—with metadata for hundreds of millions of tracks and audio files for tens of millions of songs. The collection totals about 300 terabytes, and distribution is already rolling out via torrents.

According to Anna’s Archive, the trove includes metadata for roughly 256 million tracks and audio for around 86 million compositions, which they estimate covers 99.6 percent of all listening on Spotify. The music is organized by popularity, and the team presents the project as a preservation archive, arguing that a significant share of lesser-known music could vanish if streaming services lose licenses or go offline. In their view, Spotify offered a convenient starting point for saving a slice of contemporary music history.

The audio files were said to be obtained mostly directly from the platform. The most popular tracks are preserved at the original 160 kbps quality, while less in-demand titles were transcoded into more compact formats to conserve space. Releases issued after July 2025 may be missing. For now, the metadata database is fully available, and the music files are being published in stages, beginning with the most listened-to records. The rollout suggests a pragmatic focus on covering the bulk of playtime first.

Spotify has already responded, confirming that there was unauthorized access. In an official comment, the company said a third party accessed public metadata and used unlawful methods to bypass DRM in order to obtain a portion of the audio files. The service did not endorse the scale of the leak described by Anna’s Archive, saying only that some files were affected, and added that an investigation is ongoing.

The legal fallout remains unclear. Spotify’s catalog rests on strict licensing agreements with rights holders, and mass copying and distribution of tracks via torrents violates both the service’s terms and copyright laws in many countries. Even presented as preservation, such efforts typically do not receive exemptions under the law. Takedown demands and potential lawsuits are likely, yet bringing a repository of this size back under full control could prove extremely difficult.