But you can't even download the allegedly infringing material from the .org site. You can just read about it? So they're abusing the All Writs Act to take down a site that they think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing for their business. If I wasn't on Anna's side before, I sure am now.
Anna's Archive announced they intended to infringe on the label's copyrights by distributing their music without a license. The law allows the court "to prevent or restrain infringement of a copyright" (emphasis mine).
> think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing for their business
The thing in question being "we copied all your data and are now gonna release it for free". I like what Anna's is doing, but come on! This is dishonest communication if I've ever seen it!
> that they think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing
I mean, Anna's Archive was pretty clear about the future bad thing.
Spotify didn't "think", it wasn't just "related", nothing was "undetermined" or "nebulous".
Anna's Archive explicitly announced they were going to start distributing Spotify's music files. It's not even a case of hosting links to torrents but not seeding -- no, they were going to be doing the seeding too. You can't get more clear-cut than that.
I'm not taking anybody's side here, as to what copyright law ought to be, but Spotify isn't abusing the legal process here.
> Anna's Archive explicitly announced they were going to start distributing Spotify's music files. It's not even a case of hosting links to torrents but not seeding -- no, they were going to be doing the seeding too. You can't get more clear-cut than that.
You can get more "clear cut" than that. You could rule when there were damages or law was actually broken. Committing a crime is not the same as saying you will commit a crime. ie. I will rob the bank on the Chase Bank Kraemer Branch in Orange County. Now try and prosecute me. Yes, I understand this would fall under criminal vs civil. The issue is about the law being applied in the way the benefits the ones with the most money, more often than not, violating equal protections and further eroding public confidence in the US legal system.
"I'm not taking anybody's side here, as to what copyright law ought to be, but Spotify isn't abusing the legal process here".
Normally, only those who own one or more of the exclusive rights in copyright can actually enforce. Spotify does not own copyright in the music involved in the archive, unless they created some of it (which would be an interesting story, actually - spotify competing with its own artists).
So normally, they would not be able to sue for copyright related violations against anyone.
The other plaintiffs (record companies) are not abusing legal process, but it is unclear what spotify is doing in this lawsuit.
They almost certainly do not own meaningful copyright in the metadata, either, and that would be a bad precedent to see set.
Pretty ironic considering they bootstrapped the service with pirated music. But they've never actually cared about music — they started as an ad platform and music was the cheapest option for them to attract eyeballs.
It's not obvious to US English speakers but "spot" was ad industry jargon and became the word for "TV commercial" in several European languages. It's so gross that this ever slid through as a brand for a music app. We've descended so far...Music app branding started with Wesley Willis jokes!
My first language is US English and I am familiar with that usage of the word "spot", but didn't make the connection to "Spotify" until reading your comment.
This reminds me of the phenomenon of imported words being used in another language, but using a less common definitions of the word. For example I'm told "Oldtimer" is a vintage car in German, but most Americans would say it was an older or experienced person. Maybe "Spotify" could also mean something giving you acne.
That's a fun theory but there's no evidence that was their intention with the name...
From what they've said, it's about "spotting" and "identifying" music and music trends. But it seems like mostly it was just a somewhat nonsense word that was easy to remember and whose domain name was available.
Especially since it's popular as a paid service without ads.
Ek's initial pitch to Lorentzon was not initially related to music, but rather a way for streaming content such as video, digital films, images or music to drive advertising revenue.
So yes, they were always intending to get revenue from ads. And yes, the initial pitch included other types of media too. But I don't think we can call Spotify "an ad platform" that "never actually cared about music" any more than we could call Ars Technica "an ad platform that never actually cared about tech news."
Literally soulseek with ads where some dudes in Stockholm siphon off the lions share of the music industry’s revenues for building a client. The absolute nerve and cheek.
They entered a legal agreement with STIM (Swedish equivalent of RIAA) that allowed them to use whatever during a closed beta period for the artists that that were represented by them.
IMO also recent and related: NVIDIA Contacted Anna’s Archive to Secure Access to Millions of Pirated Books - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46677628 - Jan 2026 (153 comments)
Pretty much where we are in the world. You can scrape copyrighted works and re-jigger them in your own database to spit out a fascimile of art. But you can't "point" to where these scapers are going.
I don't understand the sealing and ex-parte motions in this case. It looks completely corrupt. They're claiming that the archive would have released all the material publicly if they were allowed to know an injunction was about to be filed against them.
Yet all those songs certainly have illegal copies already being distributed on the internet. So what was the actual harm being prevented here? I cannot understand how they hoodwinked a court into this misguided procedure.
The harm being done is millions of dollars for VCs and music studios.
Billionaires and enterprises want to see consumers spending to return their investment.
The presence of other - dispersed - illegal material doesn’t diminish said returns too much, this central dump would have set precedent and had garnered massive attention.
> They're claiming that the archive would have released all the material publicly if they were allowed to know an injunction was about to be filed against them.
I mean, the archive themselves publicly stated their intention to release all the material, without reference to any injunction. So the implication is trivially true, as a logician would say.
> Yet all those songs certainly have illegal copies already being distributed on the internet. So what was the actual harm being prevented here?
There's a huge difference between a ton of individual torrents or files you need to individually search for, identify, of varying quality, that may be mislabeled and have other sorts of quality issues, and which in no way approach "all" music...
...vs a single, shockingly comprehensive repository of uniformly high-quality music which does, in fact, approach "all" music.
If I wanted to start a pirate music service, it would become vastly easier with this particular repository. Many orders of magnitude easier. That's the actual harm.
Lossless pirate archives also still exist if you know where to look. Not saying you're wrong, but from a truly material angle, someone dedicated to finding an archive with enough music to start a pirate site need only join one of the existing lossless pirate sites and copy theirs. I don't see how Anna's making it easier negates the fact that it can already be done
what‘s in it for spotify? i can‘t think of a single person who‘d stop paying for streaming services (music) in favour of going back to illegally download or (or even legally purchase) songs & managing their own library.
m a y b e some devs would. but those thinking about it, wouldn‘t be stopped like that. i am thinking about it, yet i just renewed my subscription because i lack time & motivation to crawl down yet another rabbit hole of diy.
I will never START paying for Spotify. I like my music and so I like to know my music, I have no problem curating my collection, chasing rare works for artists I really like. I enjoy the process, I enjoy the result, I enjoy that I own it. I really don't see why I would rather spend hundreds a year for the privilege of owning nothing at all in the end, while being prescribed what I shall listen to, when and where.
My old mp3 collection is too big for my mobile phone and I did not set up a private streaming solution yet. So out of convenience, I also used spotify. Stream anywhere anything is nice.
And I did enjoy finding new artists through the algorithm there .. but I do made up my mind about letting go of the concenience and owning all my music again. It is a big effort, though and I don't enjoy it so much like you.
Seems like a reasonable hobby, people love doing this, but idk that not doing something you already wouldn't be inclined to do carries much weight.
Almost like how people who haven't moved out of their hometown cite all sorts of reasons or apparent faults of the place they haven't moved to, like it's too expensive; it's too rainy; it's too busy; it's not sunny enough; but really, they weren't in the business of leaving anyway, because they're comfortable or don't know how to make friends, or they stubbornly try to love a place they actually hate, or they have family there and a support structure, or they have no ambition, or they actually just like the place. Either way, the moving goalposts and random critiques don't matter, it's not the hypothetical destination's burden to court someone who won't make that leap anyway, but there may be a select few fence sitters who are just waiting for a push.
I don't think Spotify's main objective is to persuade hobbyist music collectors to stop, but rather it's to persuade people who want to access music anywhere to pay for the service, which may or may not be someone forced to ditch their vinyl collection or Zune. Voting with your wallet only matters if the service you actually might pay for or are paying for stops being a compelling product.
I'm old enough to have an mp3 collection, so I haven't needed spotify. They don't have 20% of the tracks in my playlist and their integration of local audio has been steadily eroded to be almost unusable now (i.e. it's completely separate, doesn't show up in regular search, playlists etc.). They also push audiobooks and sponsored results in my face even on the Premium subscription, and their UI sucks.
If you already have a collection and are reasonably content in what you listen to, topping it up with a few albums a year is not that hard.
Many people are cancelling Spotify among my friends, even very "non-technical" folks. For me I've just gone back to radio or Youtube:ing a few songs for free here and there. Paying the cost of a lunch every month is just not worth it anymore for subscription services.
I run a Navidrome server I stream my own music from. I tag everything with Mp3tag and have a shell script to organize and upload the tagged files. Not all of the music I listen to regularly is on Spotify and their treatment of artists is abominable.
ATLANTIC RECORDING CORPORATION;
ATLANTIC MUSIC GROUP LLC; BAD
BOY RECORDS LLC; ELEKTRA
ENTERTAINMENT LLC; ELEKTRA
ENTERTAINMENT GROUP INC.; FUELED
BY RAMEN LLC; WARNER MUSIC
INTERNATIONAL SERVICES LIMITED;
WARNER RECORDS INC.; WARNER
RECORDS LLC; SONY MUSIC
ENTERTAINMENT; ARISTA MUSIC;
ARISTA RECORDS, LLC; ZOMBA
RECORDING LLC; UMG RECORDINGS,
INC.; CAPITOL RECORDS, LLC; and
SPOTIFY USA INC.,
Plaintiffs,
Factual Background - III
The Record Company Plaintiffs’ business model relies
in significant part on the licensing of their catalogs of sound recordings
to legitimate streaming services like Spotify.
IMO Spotify couldn't care less. The actual owners of music care.
Cozy secondary relationships with music labels. Payola goes one way and industry demands go the other.
Since "owners" take such a big chunk (50%) of paid royalties for streaming there is a strong incentive to only play music that is "owned" by labels and not directly by artists and performers. Controlling the number of "spins" an song or album of theirs gets is still a huge concern of the labels.
> here is a strong incentive to only play music that is "owned" by labels and not directly by artists and performers.
Spotify has exactly zero music "directly by artists and performers". Even indie artists have to go through distributors and labels. Because without "owners" that own 60-80% of all world music, and that Spotify pays 70% of revenue to there would be no Spotify (or any music streaming service).
Honestly, Spotify itself probably couldn't care less, for the obvious reasons you say.
But the music labels sure do. Their contracts with Spotify surely require it to implement appropriate DRM, stop all attempted piracy, etc. If Spotify wants to be on good negotiating terms with labels, they have absolutely no choice but to take as much legal action as possible.
I put Rockbox on a non-techie friend’s new mp3 player just the other day. Some folks absolutely went back to buying/pirating music after the whole Spotify playing ads for ICE thing. It’s apparently fun curating a collection like in the olden days, and sites like fmhy have gotten pretty popular recently.
Spotify cancelled my subscription. I started off with a Spotify partner subscription with my wife, which grandfathered into some other thing, like a family subscription, and then whatever I had got cancelled. Meanwhile I found a new local radio station has started playing 60% of what I like, some new (to me) joint venture thats a web first marketing company and they bought a bunch of radio stations to add local radio advertising to their list of services. Between spotify with ads, radio with ads, I am listening to radio, while planning out how to most easily go back to just having my favourites on my phone or maybe even an mp3 player.
IF I were still a Spotify user - this would be the nail in the coffin. Not that the founder wouldn't give me enough reason. But they lost me due to other reasons.
I am still paying for streaming, though. Still. Not sure if it is really worth it - and once I have my local mp3 collection available for myself - not sure, if I need a paid streaming service. I am getting too old and I return more and more to the songs I grew up with. And to be honest - if I would be missing anything, I could easily yt-dlp it, store it on my server and have it available ti myself via self hosted streaming.
I am loosing more and more interest in streaming. For video and music.
I think the main use-case for the metadata-enriched 300TB archive is training AI models like suno. Anyone torrenting music for personal consumption had higher quality sources available already.
> i can‘t think of a single person who‘d stop paying for streaming services (music) in favour of going back to illegally download or (or even legally purchase) songs
I'd love to self host my music, but curating my collection is a lot of work. I made several attempts, but looking for music I like was too much work for me. If getting "illegal" music becomes easier I'll definitely eventually do this.
I would go back in an instant. I think a lot of people would if it is convenient.
Furthermore, all someone has to do is make a Spotify clone to interact with the archive and you have consumed their entire business.
Even if you didnt want a DIY solution, I bet you would accept a free clone, along with every other customer
Unfortunately for Spotify, court orders are ineffective against foreign nationals sharing information. Copyright enforcement is as futile as the encryption "export restrictions" the US and other countries tried in the 90s and early 2000s.
Since they don't "own" the data they lost, only "rent" it, they probably have to be seen doing something about it, lest they face the wrath of record companies.
I have a really hard time imagining the record companies giving a shit about this, this isn't a pre-release leak. All the valuable content is already freely and easily available for download on the internet.
Yeah, but TFA notes how Anna's Archive is dependent on US-based infrastructure, including Cloudflare.
As much as I love Anna's Archive, I feel like this Spotify move was a misstep on their part. The music industry seems far scarier than the publishing industry when it comes to copyright suits, which means they have a lot to lose here by poking the bear, but there are already plenty of places to find pirated music, which means they also don't have much to gain.
It's a cool publicity stunt for Anna's, and perhaps the hackers responsible for getting the data simply wanted to show it off and leave Spotify with some egg on their face. I know I wouldn't be able to stop myself from publishing it if I was in their position, foolish as it may be.
Every pirate site operator knows you don't use .org because the registry is very happy to take down pirate sites without much evidence. It's surprising this one lasted this long.
Readit News
B) We should all be on Anna's side if we're to live up this board's name even a little bit: https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj...
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/502#:~:text=Any%2...
Voting with your wallet no longer really matters does it unless your wallet is attached to a billion dollar stock portfolio.
Anna's Archive made threats in writing to distribute, concretely and specifically, the plaintiff's copyrighted works as torrents.
It's insane to call this a "threat". It's like saying they made threats to breathe. Freely sharing things should be an inalienable universal right.
Deleted Comment
The record company plaintiffs make sense here - spotify does not.
They don't own copyright in anything here, including the metadata.
The thing in question being "we copied all your data and are now gonna release it for free". I like what Anna's is doing, but come on! This is dishonest communication if I've ever seen it!
Oh it looks like the justice system isn’t stupid enough to fall for it. Now everyone is angry that the justice system isn’t serious and dumb.
I mean, Anna's Archive was pretty clear about the future bad thing.
Spotify didn't "think", it wasn't just "related", nothing was "undetermined" or "nebulous".
Anna's Archive explicitly announced they were going to start distributing Spotify's music files. It's not even a case of hosting links to torrents but not seeding -- no, they were going to be doing the seeding too. You can't get more clear-cut than that.
I'm not taking anybody's side here, as to what copyright law ought to be, but Spotify isn't abusing the legal process here.
You can get more "clear cut" than that. You could rule when there were damages or law was actually broken. Committing a crime is not the same as saying you will commit a crime. ie. I will rob the bank on the Chase Bank Kraemer Branch in Orange County. Now try and prosecute me. Yes, I understand this would fall under criminal vs civil. The issue is about the law being applied in the way the benefits the ones with the most money, more often than not, violating equal protections and further eroding public confidence in the US legal system.
Normally, only those who own one or more of the exclusive rights in copyright can actually enforce. Spotify does not own copyright in the music involved in the archive, unless they created some of it (which would be an interesting story, actually - spotify competing with its own artists).
So normally, they would not be able to sue for copyright related violations against anyone.
The other plaintiffs (record companies) are not abusing legal process, but it is unclear what spotify is doing in this lawsuit.
They almost certainly do not own meaningful copyright in the metadata, either, and that would be a bad precedent to see set.
It's not obvious to US English speakers but "spot" was ad industry jargon and became the word for "TV commercial" in several European languages. It's so gross that this ever slid through as a brand for a music app. We've descended so far...Music app branding started with Wesley Willis jokes!
This reminds me of the phenomenon of imported words being used in another language, but using a less common definitions of the word. For example I'm told "Oldtimer" is a vintage car in German, but most Americans would say it was an older or experienced person. Maybe "Spotify" could also mean something giving you acne.
From what they've said, it's about "spotting" and "identifying" music and music trends. But it seems like mostly it was just a somewhat nonsense word that was easy to remember and whose domain name was available.
Especially since it's popular as a paid service without ads.
/s
Deleted Comment
But I get you, doing research is hard.
Anna's Archive loses .org domain after surprise suspension - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46497164 - Jan 2026 (358 comments)
Spotify reportedly investigating Anna's Archive's scraping of their library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46355793 - Dec 2025 (82 comments)
Backing up Spotify - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46338339 - Dec 2025 (701 comments)
Yet all those songs certainly have illegal copies already being distributed on the internet. So what was the actual harm being prevented here? I cannot understand how they hoodwinked a court into this misguided procedure.
Billionaires and enterprises want to see consumers spending to return their investment.
The presence of other - dispersed - illegal material doesn’t diminish said returns too much, this central dump would have set precedent and had garnered massive attention.
This is the capitalist way.
I mean, the archive themselves publicly stated their intention to release all the material, without reference to any injunction. So the implication is trivially true, as a logician would say.
There's a huge difference between a ton of individual torrents or files you need to individually search for, identify, of varying quality, that may be mislabeled and have other sorts of quality issues, and which in no way approach "all" music...
...vs a single, shockingly comprehensive repository of uniformly high-quality music which does, in fact, approach "all" music.
If I wanted to start a pirate music service, it would become vastly easier with this particular repository. Many orders of magnitude easier. That's the actual harm.
And I did enjoy finding new artists through the algorithm there .. but I do made up my mind about letting go of the concenience and owning all my music again. It is a big effort, though and I don't enjoy it so much like you.
Almost like how people who haven't moved out of their hometown cite all sorts of reasons or apparent faults of the place they haven't moved to, like it's too expensive; it's too rainy; it's too busy; it's not sunny enough; but really, they weren't in the business of leaving anyway, because they're comfortable or don't know how to make friends, or they stubbornly try to love a place they actually hate, or they have family there and a support structure, or they have no ambition, or they actually just like the place. Either way, the moving goalposts and random critiques don't matter, it's not the hypothetical destination's burden to court someone who won't make that leap anyway, but there may be a select few fence sitters who are just waiting for a push.
I don't think Spotify's main objective is to persuade hobbyist music collectors to stop, but rather it's to persuade people who want to access music anywhere to pay for the service, which may or may not be someone forced to ditch their vinyl collection or Zune. Voting with your wallet only matters if the service you actually might pay for or are paying for stops being a compelling product.
If you already have a collection and are reasonably content in what you listen to, topping it up with a few albums a year is not that hard.
Or just use youtube music!
There are probably good local solutions for the last one especially, but a convenient UI that's already on all your devices helps.
Spotify will never be able to pay out enough if people don’t think this music is worth paying for.
They want access to every new album but refuse to pay how much a single new CD would have cost back in the day
Their relationship with the labels
Since "owners" take such a big chunk (50%) of paid royalties for streaming there is a strong incentive to only play music that is "owned" by labels and not directly by artists and performers. Controlling the number of "spins" an song or album of theirs gets is still a huge concern of the labels.
Spotify has exactly zero music "directly by artists and performers". Even indie artists have to go through distributors and labels. Because without "owners" that own 60-80% of all world music, and that Spotify pays 70% of revenue to there would be no Spotify (or any music streaming service).
Honestly, Spotify itself probably couldn't care less, for the obvious reasons you say.
But the music labels sure do. Their contracts with Spotify surely require it to implement appropriate DRM, stop all attempted piracy, etc. If Spotify wants to be on good negotiating terms with labels, they have absolutely no choice but to take as much legal action as possible.
I am still paying for streaming, though. Still. Not sure if it is really worth it - and once I have my local mp3 collection available for myself - not sure, if I need a paid streaming service. I am getting too old and I return more and more to the songs I grew up with. And to be honest - if I would be missing anything, I could easily yt-dlp it, store it on my server and have it available ti myself via self hosted streaming.
I am loosing more and more interest in streaming. For video and music.
Their response to litigation?
> NVIDIA defended its actions as fair use, noting that books are nothing more than statistical correlations to its AI models.
It's barely veiled these days how little they care for art.
I'd love to self host my music, but curating my collection is a lot of work. I made several attempts, but looking for music I like was too much work for me. If getting "illegal" music becomes easier I'll definitely eventually do this.
Even if you didnt want a DIY solution, I bet you would accept a free clone, along with every other customer
Deleted Comment
Credit where it's due, Spotify made it a lot harder to find pirated music in good quality
As much as I love Anna's Archive, I feel like this Spotify move was a misstep on their part. The music industry seems far scarier than the publishing industry when it comes to copyright suits, which means they have a lot to lose here by poking the bear, but there are already plenty of places to find pirated music, which means they also don't have much to gain.
Deleted Comment
Anna always knew the .org domain was vulnerable. Why wouldn't they?