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Anna’s Archive - Backing up Spotify (annas-archive.li)

submitted 2 weeks ago by e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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We backed up Spotify (metadata and music files). It’s distributed in bulk torrents (~300TB), grouped by popularity.

This release includes the largest publicly available music metadata database with 256 million tracks and 186 million unique ISRCs.

It’s the world’s first “preservation archive” for music which is fully open (meaning it can easily be mirrored by anyone with enough disk space), with 86 million music files, representing around 99.6% of listens.

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[-] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 162 points 2 weeks ago

damn, annas is fucking based. hope they stay safe..

[-] Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 40 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I fucking love annas archive.

~~Anna does seem rather insane though~~

Edit: I was thinking of Alexandra Elbakyan, the creator of Sci-Hub

[-] deltaspawn0040@lemmy.zip 12 points 2 weeks ago

C'mon you gotta say why im curious

[-] Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

iirc her writings gave me the impression that she basically worships communism and famous soviet communist leaders in a vaguely religious way. I can go look again later and elaborate. It could just be the language barrier that gave me that impression.

Edit: I was misremembering Alexandra Elbakyan, the creator of Sci-Hub, as Anna of Anna's Archive. Oops

[-] degen@midwest.social 10 points 2 weeks ago

Idk if I'd expect much less from a legendary pirate

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[-] Zombie@feddit.uk 111 points 2 weeks ago

After Meta scraped all their books they have the perfect defense now. All they have to say is "we're training a music AI" and they're apparently untouchable.

[-] Signtist@bookwyr.me 30 points 2 weeks ago

Well, they have to say "we're training a music AI" while slipping several million dollars into the pockets of the right people. Rich people don't win legal battles by actually proving what they did isn't illegal, they do it by discreetly paying people to say they did.

[-] 4grams@awful.systems 9 points 2 weeks ago

Often and increasingly they are not bothering with the discretion part anymore.

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[-] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 53 points 2 weeks ago

Anyone knows if spotify metadata have BPM and keys?

[-] Jerkface@piefed.social 38 points 2 weeks ago

Mashup artist detected

[-] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 9 points 2 weeks ago

Would love lmao. Just bought a second hand VDJ and I'm starting to experiment with mixxx, and I don't know is the style I like (latincore and adjacents) or if the BPM detected of mixxx isn't that good.

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[-] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 33 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Both. Per the SQL schema printed in the article, table track_audio_features has both fields tempo and key along with many other technicals. Worth checking out, it's near the bottom of the page.

[-] napkin2020@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 weeks ago

BPM yes, keys I'm not so sure.

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[-] robot_dog_with_gun@hexbear.net 44 points 2 weeks ago

300TB pingu-horny

[-] studentofarkad@lemmy.zip 41 points 2 weeks ago

Are these the actual music files you can use to play as well?

[-] notgold@aussie.zone 43 points 2 weeks ago

Would be amazing if it was. I would love to just have Spotify's music on my nas

[-] AstralPath@lemmy.ca 51 points 2 weeks ago

I'd wager 70% of what's on Spotify is not worth preserving since its AI slop.

[-] nagaram@startrek.website 54 points 2 weeks ago

I'm not convinced AI slop can compete with the back log of organic slop personally.

But yeah a fuckton is probably slop either way

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[-] skisnow@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah as with most of the internet, it’s only worth downloading anything uploaded before 2023.

So far, LLMs have done so much more harm than help.

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[-] Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 weeks ago

Interestingly enough, with the data they provide, figuring out how much of it is AI slop wouldn't be that hard I think

[-] DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 25 points 2 weeks ago

If your nas has 300tb spare, you could.

[-] sopularity_fax@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 weeks ago

How much could it cost $10,000

[-] No_Eponym@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 weeks ago

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[-] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

A RAID6 of 24 * 20TB drives could contain that with both parity and hotswap, with room to spare. Let's say $400 per refurb drive, $2500 rackmount SAS enclosure, $2000 SAS RAID card, $14,100 total. Assuming you already have the server and power and SAS cables.

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[-] Jerkface@piefed.social 22 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

The article claims that they are:

We backed up Spotify (metadata and music files).

[-] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 10 points 2 weeks ago

They've released torrents of the metadata, and they plan to release the music files, but they haven't yet. They intend to start by offering the downloads as bulk torrents, but they're open to considering implementing the ability to download single songs in the future.

So in short, yes, but you can't download them yet

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[-] SlimePirate@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 2 weeks ago

Now make it streamable and make a stremio-like music client 🤞

[-] Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip 42 points 2 weeks ago

Record labels themselves would march on foot to burn down the archives

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 22 points 2 weeks ago

Does anyone see the torrent links?

[-] skisnow@lemmy.ca 45 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It says,

The data will be released in different stages on our Torrents page:

[X] Metadata (Dec 2025)

[ ] Music files (releasing in order of popularity)

[ ] Additional file metadata (torrent paths and checksums)

[ ] Album art

[ ] .zstdpatch files (to reconstruct original files before we added embedded metadata)

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, I saw that and assumed they'd be torrents of the metadata.

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[-] GasMaskedLunatic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 2 weeks ago

I cannot fathom the legal fees that will be incurred if they release 99.6% of Spotify to the public for free. Holy fucking shit.

[-] Hyperrealism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Maybe they could say they're AI. Apparently copyright infringement's legal then.

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[-] upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Does this make Anna's Archive the top music tracker now? Lol move over RED

[-] mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 2 weeks ago

Dns blocked in germany. fun.

[-] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 weeks ago

Does DoH work? (Secure DNS in firefox's settings)

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[-] anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 2 weeks ago

"Honey, all I need is $10,000 for a server and we'll never pay for Spotify again"

[-] slappyfuck@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 weeks ago

Omg if my girlfriend had $10k to give me for a server I could buy like a RAM or two!

[-] degen@midwest.social 15 points 2 weeks ago

Almost makes me want to get into torrenting again. But dab.yeet.su, squid.wtf, and doubledouble.top usually have me covered with ddl

[-] LuigiMaoFrance@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 weeks ago

holy fuck

[-] harcesz@szmer.info 8 points 2 weeks ago

Would be interesting if someone checked what % of that archive is slopified.

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[-] Andrzej3K@hexbear.net 8 points 2 weeks ago

This is such important work o7

[-] Kirk@startrek.website 7 points 2 weeks ago

I wonder why Spotify and not YouTube Music, Tidal or Apple Music all of which are higher quality.

[-] EccTM@lemmy.ml 61 points 2 weeks ago

They said this in the linked blog post:

A while ago, we discovered a way to scrape Spotify at scale.

Seems like reason enough to choose to scrape Spotify to me.

[-] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 8 points 2 weeks ago

And Spetify's catalogue is the broadest too.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 10 points 2 weeks ago

Spotify has lossless now. Although if you're listening on anything with Bluetooth then you probably won't notice anyway.

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this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025

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