Apr 16, 2026 22:00:00

A court has ordered Anna's Archive, a pirated library that illegally collected Spotify content, to pay $322.2 million (approximately 51 billion yen) in damages.

Anna's Archive , which calls itself 'the largest shadow library in human history,' collects and publishes literature and books from around the world, many of which are protected by copyright. In addition, in December 2025, it announced that it had scraped metadata for 256 million songs and music files for 86 million songs from Spotify, and in February 2026, it began publishing the data of the songs themselves, thus collecting and publishing Spotify's content without permission. In response, Spotify and three major record companies filed a copyright infringement lawsuit, and as a result, they won a $322.2 million (approximately 51 billion yen) damages order.

Spotify and Major Labels Win $322M in Music Piracy Lawsuit
https://www.billboard.com/pro/spotify-major-labels-win-music-piracy-lawsuit/

Anna's Archive Loses $322 Million Spotify Piracy Case Without a Fight * TorrentFreak
https://torrentfreak.com/annas-archive-loses-322-million-spotify-piracy-case-without-a-fight/

In December 2025, Anna's Archive began releasing metadata, claiming to have scraped 256 million song metadata and 86 million music files from Spotify, archiving music files equivalent to approximately 99.6% of the total plays. Anna's Archive explained, 'We do not distinguish between types of media in order to preserve human knowledge and culture. We believe that building archives with preservation as the primary purpose is our mission. This scraping of Spotify is a small step towards building a music preservation archive.'

Spotify's data for 256 million songs was stolen, and the metadata was fully released on the piracy site 'Anna's Archive,' with plans to release approximately 300TB of music files - GIGAZINE

In December 2025, a few days after Anna's Archive published metadata scraped from Spotify, Spotify filed a lawsuit along with major companies such as Universal, Warner, and Sony. In response to the lawsuit, Anna's Archive took action to remove content, and some of its domains were suspended by preliminary injunctions against domain registrars and registries. However, Anna's Archive has changed its domain and continues to operate.

Furthermore, it has been confirmed that music files also began to be released approximately two months after the metadata was made public. While there is no information about music files on Anna's Archive's official blog or library page, download links for music files have been added to the 'torrents.json' file on the site, and as of February 15, 2026, a total of over 2.8 million music files were available for download from these links.

The pirated music site Anna's Archive has quietly started releasing music files extracted from Spotify - GIGAZINE

Regarding the music files, Anna's Archive explained that they 'accidentally published torrents of some files.' They also commented on Reddit: 'Welcome to our new domain! Due to ongoing attacks, we are raising funds again. We have temporarily suspended the release of files for Spotify because we accidentally published torrents of some files. Given the additional troubles with music industry lawyers, we decided it wasn't worth it until we could get back on track. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us so far!'

Spotify and music labels filed a new lawsuit in March 2026, seeking $322 million in damages, after a user ignored an immediate injunction prohibiting the distribution of illegally obtained music from Spotify and released torrent files that provided access to the music files. The damages sought are as follows: Spotify for $300 million (approximately 47 billion yen) for 120,000 music files, Warner for $7.2 million (approximately 1.1 billion yen) for 48 titles, and Sony and Universal for $7.5 million (approximately 2.3 billion yen) each for 50 titles. The plaintiffs say these amounts are 'extremely modest compared to the scale of the copyright infringement damages.'

On April 14, 2026, a federal judge ruled that Anna's Archive must pay Spotify $300 million and music labels a total of $22 million (approximately 3 billion yen) in damages as requested by the plaintiffs.

The total damages awarded are a massive $322.2 million (approximately 51 billion yen), but the identity of the operator of Anna's Archive is unknown, and they did not appear in court, making it difficult to enforce the compensation judgment. In addition, a permanent injunction has been issued ordering ISPs to permanently shut down Anna's Archive, but Anna's Archive has restarted operations with a new domain name each time its domain name has been shut down in the past.

A federal judge has ordered Anna's Archive to submit a compliance report, including valid contact information for the site and its operators, within 10 business days. Failure to submit this report could result in Anna's Archive being charged with contempt of court.