Anonymous shadow library Anna’s Archive has been ordered to pay $322 million in damages as punishment for scraping millions of tracks from Spotify.

The order comes as a result of a lawsuit from Spotify and the three major labels: Universal Music Group, Sony, and Warner Music Group.

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On April 14, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District Court for New York found Anna’s Archive guilty of charges including copyright infringement, breach of contract, and violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The prominent music companies initially sought the massive figure of $13 trillion in damages for “brazen theft of millions of files containing nearly all of the world’s commercial sound recordings”.

The amount was justified via $151,000 for the 86 million songs Anna’s Archive claimed to have illegally downloaded from Spotify. Anna’s Archive also retrieved 256 million rows of metadata, including artist names and record titles.

Anna’s Archive stated goal was to share all the music for free via BitTorrent, creating “the largest truly open library in human history.”

The $322 million in damages is a far cry lower than the quite-frankly ludicrous figure of $13 trillion – a significant portion of the $30 trillion total US gross domestic product in 2025, for reference. But how exactly Anna’s Archive will be forced to pay, or whether it’ll even be able to, is currently a question mark. The identities of those behind Anna’s Archive are currently unknown, and they haven’t appeared for any court proceedings.

As such, plaintiffs requested a favourable ruling on the grounds of “failure to answer or otherwise defend against the claims in the Complaint”.

Should payment be made, however, $300 million of the $322 million settlement will go to Spotify. The three major labels will split the rest, receiving roughly $7 million each.

So far, Judge Rakoff has been able to file a preliminary injunction against the group, which ordered internet hosting providers to block domains associated with Anna’s Archive, such as annas-archive.org, annas-archive.li, and annas-archive.se.

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