In a surprising turn of events, Spotify has launched a lawsuit against Anna’s Archive, an open-source search engine for shadow libraries, worth a gigantic $13 trillion. The audio streaming platform has levied charges of theft of “256 million rows of track metadata and 86 million audio files” on the search engine.
Spotify reportedly files $13 trillion lawsuit over alleged song theft
Spotify, in collaboration with Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment, has decided to sue Anna’s Archive for $13 trillion for allegedly scraping 86 million music files.
The lawsuit was originally filed on December 26, 2025, before reaching unsealed status on January 16, 2026, as per NME. The collective alleged that Anna’s Archive had scraped 300TB of metadata, which basically represented “99.6% of all listens on Spotify.” (via Dexerto)
However, Anna’s Archive, previously known as the Pirate Library Mirror, has denied all claims of theft and piracy by stating that it does not directly host any files. Basically, the online platform does not provide its users with outright access to illegally obtained songs. Instead, the service hosts links to third-party sites that are actually hosting the content in question.
Nevertheless, Spotify and other involved record labels have termed the actions of Anna’s Archive as a “brazen theft of millions of files containing nearly all of the world’s commercial sound recordings,” deeming the service operators to be a “group of internet pirates with no regard for the law.”
As such, the lawsuit filed by Spotify and the collective claims that all impacted parties are “entitled to statutory damages in the amount of up to $150,000 for each work.” With the filing citing the amount of stolen songs to be 86 million, the aggregate amount of the lawsuit comes out to be $13 trillion.
Judge Jed S. Rakoff has since issued a preliminary injunction against the platform, which requires hosting providers and domain registries to disable all access to websites registered under Anna’s Archive’s name.
The under-fire search engine has yet to share a public response regarding the matter.
