Spotify and three major music labels have secured a $322 million default judgment against Anna Archive, the shadow library that removed 86 million songs from Spotify’s platform and announced plans to release them publicly via BitTorrent.
The only problem: No one knows who actually operates the site, and collecting a nine-figure damage award from an unknown entity is a completely different challenge than winning one.
In December 2024, Anna Archive made an announcement that it had downloaded almost the total amount of commercial sound recordings from Spotify, referring to its function as a “music preservation archive”.
The copyright infringement case was filed by Spotify, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music in January 2025. According to these companies, this act by Anna Archive was nothing more than audacious theft, the likes of which the music industry had never seen from a single organization.
However, this shadow library did not stop itself from continuing its activity even after the case was filed. Torrents of approximately three million music files were made available by Ana Archive in February 2025.
Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York has now granted a default judgment against the defendants following their failure to appear in court. The damage award in this case has been set at $300 million in favor of Spotify.
The three record labels, UMG, WMG and Sony Music, received judgments totaling $22.2 million. The judgment also included a permanent injunction whereby the ISP would block Anna Archive’s website, while the library was ordered to delete any and all copies of music collected using its scraping methods.
Default judgments occur when the defendant is absent during the trial, meaning the Archdiocese of Anna had no time to provide his or her defense during the hearing.
From reports in Billboard, it has been revealed that Anna’s Archive has a history of relaunching itself under other domain names when blocked by ISPs. Furthermore, there is no identity associated with the collection, and it is operated through anonymous individuals or organizations.
