Anna’s Archive releases Spotify files despite $13 trillion lawsuit

Anna's Archive, a site that serves as a shadow library for pirated content, has reportedly begun to quietly release millions of audio files scraped from Spotify. Anna's Archive made this move despite a staggering $13 trillion lawsuit — yes, trillion with a "T" — levied against the site by Spotify and major music labels.

Two privacy-focused websites, TorrentFreak and CyberNews, reported that Anna's Archive had begun to release the files scraped from Spotify. TorrentFreak reported the site's index "lists dozens of new torrents containing approximately 2.8 million tracks totaling roughly 6 terabytes of audio data."

CyberNews noted that, for the time being, the release appears to be composed of some of the least popular tracks in the trove of files scraped by Anna's Archive. The site wrote:

"However, it appears the release includes only some of the least popular scraped tracks, labeled with the 'pop_0' tag. Spotify’s algorithm assigns tracks a popularity metric ranging from 0 to 100, based on the total number of streams and the recency of those plays."

Spotify, along with three major labels — Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group — sued Anna's Archive, it was revealed last month, accusing the site of "brazen theft of millions of files containing nearly all of the world’s commercial sound recordings." A preliminary injunction was issued against Anna's Archive, which it is now reportedly defying.