Spotify’s Musical Mayhem: The Great Stream Scrape Caper!
What do you do when streaming services vanish? Anna’s Archive says, “Scrape Spotify!” With 300 terabytes of music, they aim to preserve our musical heritage. But their “open” archive covers only a third of Spotify’s catalog. Spotify calls it piracy, not preservation. Meanwhile, the metadata awaits your download frenzy.
Hot Take:
If the world of music streaming was a ship, Anna’s Archive just tried to become its lifeboat, but forgot to include space for the unpopular passengers. While Spotify calls foul, Anna’s Archive is busy playing Robin Hood with a hint of selective amnesia when it comes to their own piracy claims. It’s a classic case of ‘I’m not stealing, I’m preserving!’ – but only preserving the hits, because who needs B-sides anyway?
Key Points:
- Anna’s Archive claims to have scraped 300 terabytes of music and metadata from Spotify.
- The archive is touted as a “fully open” music preservation archive but is missing about two-thirds of Spotify’s catalog.
- Spotify has shut down the user accounts involved in the scraping and implemented new security measures.
- Anna’s Archive suggests it could allow individual file downloads, blurring the line between preservation and piracy.
- Spotify maintains that the scraping constitutes piracy, not preservation.
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