Activist group says it has scraped 86m music files from Spotify
An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86m music files from Spotify and 256m rows of metadata such as artist and album names.Spotify, which hosts more than 100m tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, said it had “identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping”.
“An investigation into unauthorised access identified that a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management] to access some of the platform’s audio files,” said Spotify.Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet.Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a “‘preservation archive’ for music”.The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via “torrents”, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.“With your help, humanity’s musical heritage will be forever protected from destruction by natural disasters, wars, budget cuts and other catastrophes,” said the group.Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing AI models.“Training on pirated material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models.This is why governments must insist AI companies reveal the training data they use,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to train its AI models,According to a US court filing, Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and chief executive, approved use of the LibGen dataset despite warnings within the company’s AI executive team that it was a dataset “we know to be pirated”,Meta successfully defended a claim for copyright infringement by authors, but the plaintiffs in the case are seeking to amend their claim,The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of Spotify”,Yoav Zimmerman, a co-founder of Third Chair, said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
He added: “The only thing stopping them is copyright law and the deterrent of enforcement.”Spotify said it had put in place new safeguards “for these types of anti-copyright attacks” since the Anna’s Archive announcement and was “actively monitoring for suspicious behaviour”.Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.AI tools such as chatbots and music generators are trained on vast amounts of data taken from the open web, including copyright-protected work.In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner of the copyright-protected work signals they do not want their data to be taken.
Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns,Liz Kendall, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”,The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by 18 March next year,
The Guide #222: From Celebrity Traitors to The Brutalist via Bad Bunny – our roundup of the culture that mattered in 2025
It’s time to look back on a year of Traitors and Sinners, of Bad Bunnies and Such Brave Girls, with the Guide’s now annual roundup of the year’s best culture. As ever, the Guardian is already knee-deep in lists – of films (UK and US), albums (across rock and pop, and classical), TV shows, books and games, and theatre, comedy and dance. Some of those have already counted down to No 1, others will reach their respective summits in the coming days, so keep an eye on the homepage.Our list meanwhile is entirely, unapologetically partial, and definitely not as comprehensive as The Guardian’s many top 50s: there are numerous albums we never got around to hearing, and TV shows we’re still only halfway through. (Pluribus, Dope Thief and Blue Lights, I will return to you, I promise!) But hopefully it should give a flavour of a year that, despite so many headwinds, was a pretty strong one for culture
From Avatar to Amadeus: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Avatar: Fire and AshOut now James Cameron comes down with a case of the Christmas blues, so to speak, as the director’s record-breaking franchise epic returns once more to planet Pandora for more internecine strife and respecting of the splendour of the natural world, rendered in dazzling motion-capture glory.Silent Night, Deadly NightOut now Actor Rohan Campbell graduates from Michael Myers wannabe in the fairly dire Halloween Ends, to main bogeyman Billy Chapman in the latest instalment of the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise (second remake, seventh film overall, fact fans). Per franchise lore, he witnessed his parents’ murder-by-Santa aged five, and the rest is grisly history.Fackham HallOut now Jimmy Carr turns his hand to screenwriting with this parody of Downton Abbey-type films. Given the actual Downton Abbey films already play as a parody of Downtown Abbey-type films, there may not be much to add, but a cast including Thomasin McKenzie, Katherine Waterston, Damian Lewis and Anna Maxwell Martin are here to give it their best shot
Jimmy Kimmel on a tumultuous year: ‘Don’t know what the American way even is any more’
Late-night hosts reflected on a rollercoaster 2025 and Donald Trump’s combative, primetime year-end address to the nation.Jimmy Kimmel opened his final monologue of 2025 with an emotional reflection on a tumultuous year. “This has been a strange year. It’s been a hard year,” he said. “We’ve had some lows
Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s speech: ‘Surprise primetime episode of The Worst Wing’
Late-night hosts discussed – or ignored – Donald Trump’s surprise primetime address and dug further into the explosive new interview the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles.Jimmy Kimmel opened his Wednesday night show with an acknowledgment of the president’s 9pm ET national address, also known as a “surprise primetime episode of The Worst Wing tonight on every channel”.Trump announced only on Tuesday that he would deliver an impromptu fireside chat during the season finales of Survivor and The Floor. “It’s weird to think that had a couple of states just gone the other way, he’d be hosting one of those shows,” Kimmel joked. “Trump shouldn’t be pre-empting The Floor
Stephen Colbert on Susie Wiles’s candid interviews: ‘She dished, bish’
Late-night hosts reacted to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’s revealing interview with Vanity Fair.“If there’s one thing Donald Trump wants, it’s a hamburger,” said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show. “If there’s a second thing, though, it would be to make you think that you’re crazy. That’s why periodically, I like to remind all of you that you’re not crazy. What’s happening is crazy
The 50 best albums of 2025: No 3 – Blood Orange: Essex Honey
Dev Hynes’ deeply personal response to his mother’s death embodied the many unexpected shades of grief in pastoral hymnals and post-punk The 50 best albums of 2025 More on the best culture of 2025There’s a lot of grief across the best albums of this year. It’s unsurprising: 2025 has felt like a definitive and dismal break with government accountability, protections for marginalised people and holding back the encroachment of AI in creative and intellectual fields, to cherrypick just a few horrors. Anna von Hausswolff and Rosalía reached for transcendence from these earthly disappointments. Bad Bunny and KeiyaA countered colonial abuse and neglect with writhing resistance anthems. On a more personal scale, Lily Allen and Cate Le Bon grappled with disillusionment about mis-sold romantic ideals
Ministers raise inheritance tax threshold for farms after backlash
Deputy leader Lucy Powell says Labour must ‘stick to manifesto’ over EU customs union, in implicit rebuke to Streeting – as it happened
Reform council’s plan to shut eight care homes ‘a betrayal of local people’
Reform plan to cap aid at £1bn would damage UK’s international influence, critics warn
Keir Starmer told closer EU trade ties ‘strategic necessity’ for UK firms
Labour calls to rejoin EU customs union will become harder for Starmer to resist