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Backing up Spotify

annas-archive.li

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Re: Backing up Spotify

#71

Post by krick »

Uh, cool, I guess? I want to applaud that, but, first off, unless you are OpenAI or Facebook, it is not exactly plausibly easy to participate in the festivities. Even if I had spare 300 TB laying around, how the fuck do I download that?

But, more importantly, I cannot even say "good for you", because I don't actually think it is good for Anna's Archive. I wouldn't touch that thing, if I was them. Do we even have any solid alternatives for books, if Anna's Archive gets shot down, by the way? Don't recommend Amazon, please.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#72

Post by thaumasiotes »

crazygringo wrote: post #11

This is insane. I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this. The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. But this does seem like it will be a godsend for researche…

> I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this.

Do they have DRM at all? Youtube and Pandora don't.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#73

Post by _vqpz »

I really don't understand how focusing on source quality files is supposed to be a "major issue" with the music preservation community. It's bizarre for them to talk about these being barriers for creating a "full archive of all music that humanity has ever produced" have and their answer be scraping Spotify to end up with a music library comprised of many AI and bulk produced songs at 75/160kbps.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#75

Post by flxy »

Etheryte wrote: post #28

To put this into perspective, What.CD [0] was widely considered to be the music library of Alexandria, unparalleled in both its high quality standard and it's depth. What had in the ballpark of a few million torrents when it got raided and shut down. Anna's rip of Spotify includes roughly 186 million unique records. Granted, the tail end is a mixed bag of bot music and whatnot, but the scale is staggering. [0] https:…

I think what earned what.cd that title wasn't necessarily just the amount but the quality, as you mentioned, as well as the obscurity of a lot of the offered material. I remember finding an early EP of an unknown local band on there, and I live in the middle of nowhere in Europe. There were also quite a few really old and niche records on there which possibly couldn't be put on streaming services due to the ownership of rights being unknown. It was the equivalent of vinyl crate digging without physical restrictions.

Additionally there was a lot of discourse about music and a lot of curated discovery mechanisms I sorely miss to this day. An algorithm is no replacement for the amount of time and care people put into the web of similar artists, playlists of recommendations and reviews. Despite it being piracy, music consumption through it felt more purposeful. It's introduced me to some of my all time favourite artists, which I've seen live and own records and merchandise of.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#76

Post by luke-stanley »

lelouch9099 wrote: post #2

How legal is this with regards to copyright laws?

Currently it says they have released metadata and album art. Is archiving and sharing the textual track metadata alone (no images, no audio) legal in the US, or Europe? By what basis is it legal or illegal?

Re: Backing up Spotify

#78

Post by jsheard »

Aurornis wrote: post #21
crazygringo wrote: post #11

This is insane. I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this. The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. But this does seem like it will be a godsend for researche…

> The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. I wouldn’t be so sure. There are already tools to automatically locate and stream pirated TV and movie content automatic and on demand. They’re so common that I had non-t…

> The Anna’s archive group is ideologically motivated. They’re definitely not doing this for AI companies.

They have a page directly addressed to AI companies, offering them "enterprise-level" access to their complete archives in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars. AI may not be their original/primary motivation but they are evidently on board with facilitating AI labs piracy-maxxing.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#79

Post by ale42 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #72
crazygringo wrote: post #11

This is insane. I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this. The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. But this does seem like it will be a godsend for researche…

> I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this. Do they have DRM at all? Youtube and Pandora don't.

Yes they do use DRM. I know they are using Widevine on the web player, but possibly other ones too (never looked very far). Not sure for the app, it might be that it is using OGG streams with a custom DRM (which is probably the one some existing downloaders actually (ab)use).

Re: Backing up Spotify

#80

Post by Nextgrid »

montag wrote: post #67
Nextgrid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music piracy is already a thing, not to mention you don't even need to torrent nowadays when music is available for free on YouTube. Those who don't want to pay already don't pay so nothing changes there. The value of Spotify is the convenience, and this collection does not change that in any way. Your argument would apply if someone were to make a Spotify clone with the same UX using this data.

I don’t understand how the parent comment is downvoted yet this is not. “Stealing is ok because stealing is already a thing”… come on, now

Because it's not stealing. Stealing is a problem because it deprives the original owner of the item - whether the thief subsequently uses the item or not doesn't change that.

This doesn't apply to dematerialized content: the original copy still exists. The only negative impact occurs if someone decides to actually use the pirated copy in place of buying a licensed one.

The mere existence of this new pirate copy being around doesn't automatically imply that, especially if other, more convenient sources are available.

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