Record labels, Spotify sue pirate group Anna’s Archive over scraping and ‘brazen theft’ of millions of tracks
January 21, 2026By Murray Stassen

Last month, a “decentralized group of online piracy websites” called Anna’s Archive revealed that it had scraped approximately 86 million music files from Spotify and planned to release them via BitTorrent.

Now, the three major music companies, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and music streaming giant Spotify have filed a lawsuit against the shadow library operation.

The complaint describes Anna’s Archive as formerly known as the “Pirate Library Mirror” and accuses it of “brazen theft of millions of files containing nearly all of the world’s commercial sound recordings.”

The lawsuit, which appears to have been filed under seal on December 26, 2025, was made publicly available on January 16, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. You can read it in full here.

According to court documents, on January 2, the record labels obtained an emergency temporary restraining order, and on January 20, Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued a preliminary injunction after Anna’s Archive failed to appear at a hearing or file any response to the court.

The injunction, which you can read in full here, orders Anna’s Archive to cease all distribution of copyrighted works and prohibits them from hosting, linking to, or facilitating downloads of the scraped recordings.

The court also ordered domain registries, registrars, and hosting providers to disable access to Anna’s Archive domains including annas-archive.org, annas-archive.li, annas-archive.se, annas-archive.in, and annas-archive.pm.

The order specifically names Cloudflare, Public Interest Registry, and other service providers, requiring them to cease hosting services and preserve evidence that could identify those operating the sites.

The lawsuit notes that Anna’s Archive has illegally copied “metadata for about 256 million audio tracks (e.g., artist, album, and track name) and 86 million music files from Spotify, one of the world’s leading audio streaming services”.

The filing added: “Anna’s Archive has already released the metadata it unlawfully scraped, heralding it as, “the largest publicly available music metadata database.”

“Even more alarmingly,” it continued, “Anna’s Archive has threatened to imminently mass-release and freely distribute its pirated copies of the sound recording files to the public, without authorization from or compensation to the relevant rights holders”.

The complaint argues that “such widespread and illegal infringement would irreparably harm the music industry, including by materially interfering with the Record Company Plaintiffs’ right and ability to control their music catalog and to charge a fair market rate for their music, and by undermining the rights of the Record Company Plaintiffs’ licensees, like Spotify, to exploit their licenses and generate revenue from the Record Company Plaintiffs’ works.”

The labels and Spotify are bringing four causes of action: direct copyright infringement, breach of contract, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The record companies are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work for copyright violations, or alternatively actual damages plus profits. All plaintiffs are also requesting $2,500 per act of technological circumvention under the DMCA, or actual damages in the alternative.

The complaint alleges that Anna’s Archive “circumvented Spotify technological measures by first surreptitiously accessing and downloading the music files at issue from Spotify using thousands of accounts, and then by circumventing the technological measures Spotify uses to protect audio files from unauthorized access.”

The operation allegedly employed automated scraping designed to mimic normal user behavior and avoid detection, violating Spotify’s Terms of Service in the process.

Anna’s Archive operates as an anonymous collective running shadow library websites at multiple domains. According to the filing, as “an organization dedicated to online piracy,” Anna’s Archive has stated it “need[s] to stay anonymous.” In its complaint, plaintiffs characterize the defendants as “a group of anonymous Internet pirates with no regard for the law.”

“Such widespread and illegal infringement would irreparably harm the music industry, including by materially interfering with the Record Company Plaintiffs’ right and ability to control their music catalog.”

Complaint filed by labels, Spotify

The lawsuit, which was first reported by Complex, notes that Anna’s Archive profits from its activities by soliciting “donations” of $2 to $100 per month using untraceable payment methods including gift cards and cryptocurrency. In exchange, users receive “fast downloads” and can avoid waitlists. The complaint describes these payments as paid memberships despite being labeled as donations.

In a statement to media outlets following the December announcement, Spotify said it has “identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping” and implemented new safeguards against such attacks. The company emphasized it has “stood with the artist community against piracy since day one” and is working with industry partners to protect creators’ rights.

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/r...6m-tracks/

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Bandcamp bans purely AI-generated music from its platform
Indie music store says it wants fans to have confidence music was largely made by humans.
Benj Edwards – Jan 14, 2026 9:46 AM



On Tuesday, Bandcamp announced on Reddit that it will no longer permit AI-generated music on its platform. “Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp,” the company wrote in a post to the r/bandcamp subreddit. The new policy also prohibits “any use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles.”

The policy draws a line that some in the music community have debated: Where does tool use end and full automation begin? AI models are not artists in themselves, since they lack personhood and creative intent. But people do use AI tools to make music, and the spectrum runs from using AI for minor assistance (cleaning up audio, suggesting chord progressions) to typing a prompt and letting a model generate an entire track. Bandcamp’s policy targets the latter end of that spectrum while leaving room for human artists who incorporate AI tools into a larger creative process.

The announcement emphasized the platform’s desire to protect its community of human artists. “The fact that Bandcamp is home to such a vibrant community of real people making incredible music is something we want to protect and maintain,” the company wrote. Bandcamp asked users to flag suspected AI-generated content through its reporting tools, and the company said it reserves “the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI generated.”

As generative AI tools make it trivial to produce unlimited quantities of music, art, and text, this author once argued that platforms may need to actively preserve spaces for human expression rather than let them drown in machine-generated output. Bandcamp’s decision seems to move in that direction, but it also leaves room for platforms like Suno, which primarily host AI-generated music.

Two platforms, two approaches, one flood
The policy contrasts with Spotify, which explicitly permits AI-generated music, although its users have expressed frustration with an influx of AI-generated tracks created by tools like Suno and Udio. Some of those AI music issues predate the latest tools, however. In 2023, Spotify removed tens of thousands of AI-generated songs from distributor Boomy after discovering evidence of artificial streaming fraud, but the flood just kept coming.

Last September, Spotify revealed that it had removed 75 million spam tracks over the previous year. It’s a figure that rivals the scale of Spotify’s actual catalog of 100 million tracks. Country music has also been particularly affected by AI music synthesis on Spotify, with AI-generated tracks sometimes topping genre charts above fully human tracks in December 2025.

In a newsroom post from last year, Spotify wrote that it envisioned “a future where artists and producers are in control of how or if they incorporate AI into their creative processes” and that the company wants to leave “those creative decisions to artists themselves.” Spotify focuses its enforcement on impersonation, spam, and deception rather than banning AI-generated content outright.

In some ways, the stark contrast between Bandcamp and Spotify reflects their different business models. Bandcamp operates as a direct marketplace where artists sell music and merchandise to fans, taking a cut of each sale. Spotify pays artists per stream, creating incentives for bad actors to flood the platform with cheap AI content and game the algorithm.

Bandcamp acknowledged the policy may evolve. “We will be sure to communicate any updates to the policy as the rapidly changing generative AI space develops,” the company wrote. The announcement also noted that the company had received feedback about this issue previously, writing, “Given the response around this to our previous posts, we hope this news is welcomed.”

Enforcement remains a question. Detecting AI-generated music is not straightforward, since today’s products of AI synthesis realistically imitate voices and even acoustic instruments. Bandcamp did not specify what tools or methods it would use to identify AI content, only that its team would review flagged submissions. In a world where seemingly unlimited quantities of music can now be created at the push of a button, that’s no minor task.

Keeping Bandcamp Human
Posted by Bandcamp January 13, 2026



Keeping Bandcamp Human
Bandcamp’s mission is to help spread the healing power of music by building a community where artists thrive through the direct support of their fans. We believe that the human connection found through music is a vital part of our society and culture, and that music is much more than a product to be consumed. It’s the result of a human cultural dialog stretching back before the written word.

Similarly, musicians are more than mere producers of sound. They are vital members of our communities, our culture, and our social fabric. Bandcamp was built to directly connect artists and their fans, and to make it easy for fans to support artists equitably so that they can keep making music.


Today we are fortifying our mission by articulating our policy on generative AI, so that musicians can keep making music, and so that fans have confidence that the music they find on Bandcamp was created by humans.

Our guidelines for generative AI in music and audio are as follows:

Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp.
Any use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles is strictly prohibited in accordance with our existing policies prohibiting impersonation and intellectual property infringement.
If you encounter music or audio that appears to be made entirely or with heavy reliance on generative AI, please use our reporting tools to flag the content for review by our team. We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI-generated.

With this policy, we’re putting human creativity first, and we will be sure to communicate any updates to the policy as the rapidly changing generative AI space develops.

Thank you.


https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/kee...amp-human/