alt.hn

1/21/2026 at 8:52:00 PM

Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/annas-archive-said-spotify-scrape-didnt-cause-domain-suspension-it-was-wrong/

by voxadam

1/21/2026 at 10:21:33 PM

But you can't even download the allegedly infringing material from the .org site. You can just read about it? So they're abusing the All Writs Act to take down a site that they think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing for their business. If I wasn't on Anna's side before, I sure am now.

by akersten

1/21/2026 at 11:32:40 PM

Anna's Archive announced they intended to infringe on the label's copyrights by distributing their music without a license. The law allows the court "to prevent or restrain infringement of a copyright" (emphasis mine).

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/502#:~:text=Any%2...

by surround

1/22/2026 at 10:37:16 AM

Spotify does not own that copyright, only a distribution license. How they can get away with it?

by kassner

1/22/2026 at 12:49:49 PM

The plaintiffs are actually record companies, spotify is tacked on at the end for some reason, and the article decided to confuse matters :)

by DannyBee

1/22/2026 at 7:57:41 PM

Rights can be extended through contracts. A lawyer at Spotify might think to put in: "we distribute the music for you, your right to enforce copyright or otherwise litigate on behalf of that music is also extended to us as if we also own it".

The legal language would be different, that's a dumbed down version.

by solaris2007

1/28/2026 at 1:21:43 AM

I do understand what can happen (I'm an IP lawyer), but this basically requires enabling spotify to act as your attorney, since they still do not in fact own the rights, even with this. You can't manufacture standing here - only folks who are exclusive rightsholders can sue. Period. So it would require giving them power of attorney enabling them to sue on your behalf, since you (or whoever) still own the exclusive rights .

I strongly doubt their contract terms have this in there, it would be fairly shocking.

I say this having seens tons of these kinds of contracts, even with spotify, and never seeing something like this.

by DannyBee

1/28/2026 at 5:59:02 AM

What I have seen in practice (not with Spotify) is a law firm that is cozy with both entities will be delegated standing, the "powers" in power of attorney but with clauses defining a limited scope and "escape hatch" and "kill switch" clauses.

by solaris2007

1/22/2026 at 6:50:38 PM

With the amount of content that has been described, it's not unlikely that Spotify actually owns some tiny fraction of it. They probably have some half-assed record label that owns two songs by a nobody.

by NoMoreNicksLeft

1/22/2026 at 11:17:37 AM

Apparently you can win anything you want in a default judgement, no matter how ridiculous. When you know the other side won't show up because they'd be handcuffed, this is a useful way to achieve your goals.

by direwolf20

1/22/2026 at 12:50:10 PM

Nah - the plaintiffs include record companies, who do have rights here.

by DannyBee

1/24/2026 at 5:30:35 PM

We need to abolish copyright laws entirely. This is just the ten millionth instance of them being abused by the 1% to harm the majority.

by helsinki8

1/27/2026 at 8:39:08 AM

In times of AI this doesn't sound lije the ideal solution either

by taskforcegemini

2/6/2026 at 5:13:03 PM

[dead]

by tempaccountabcd

1/21/2026 at 10:43:14 PM

unless you have a billion dollars, not sure anyone cares what side you're on.

Voting with your wallet no longer really matters does it unless your wallet is attached to a billion dollar stock portfolio.

by cyanydeez

1/21/2026 at 11:47:31 PM

> "think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing"

Anna's Archive made threats in writing to distribute, concretely and specifically, the plaintiff's copyrighted works as torrents.

by perihelions

1/24/2026 at 5:33:46 PM

Something they, and everyone else, should have a natural right to do.

It's insane to call this a "threat". It's like saying they made threats to breathe. Freely sharing things should be an inalienable universal right.

by helsinki8

1/22/2026 at 12:44:05 PM

Except spotify doesn't own the copyright to the music.

The record company plaintiffs make sense here - spotify does not.

They don't own copyright in anything here, including the metadata.

by DannyBee

1/21/2026 at 11:35:09 PM

> think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing for their business

The thing in question being "we copied all your data and are now gonna release it for free". I like what Anna's is doing, but come on! This is dishonest communication if I've ever seen it!

by snowmobile

1/24/2026 at 4:24:54 PM

Look at this clever hack to get away with committing crimes and there is nothing they can do.

Oh it looks like the justice system isn’t stupid enough to fall for it. Now everyone is angry that the justice system isn’t serious and dumb.

by unparagoned

1/21/2026 at 10:46:19 PM

> that they think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing

I mean, Anna's Archive was pretty clear about the future bad thing.

Spotify didn't "think", it wasn't just "related", nothing was "undetermined" or "nebulous".

Anna's Archive explicitly announced they were going to start distributing Spotify's music files. It's not even a case of hosting links to torrents but not seeding -- no, they were going to be doing the seeding too. You can't get more clear-cut than that.

I'm not taking anybody's side here, as to what copyright law ought to be, but Spotify isn't abusing the legal process here.

by crazygringo

1/21/2026 at 10:54:58 PM

> Anna's Archive explicitly announced they were going to start distributing Spotify's music files. It's not even a case of hosting links to torrents but not seeding -- no, they were going to be doing the seeding too. You can't get more clear-cut than that.

You can get more "clear cut" than that. You could rule when there were damages or law was actually broken. Committing a crime is not the same as saying you will commit a crime. ie. I will rob the bank on the Chase Bank Kraemer Branch in Orange County. Now try and prosecute me. Yes, I understand this would fall under criminal vs civil. The issue is about the law being applied in the way the benefits the ones with the most money, more often than not, violating equal protections and further eroding public confidence in the US legal system.

by Supermancho

1/21/2026 at 10:58:35 PM

> Actually committing a crime is not the same as saying you will commit a crime.

No, but it can have a lot of legal repercussions, like restraining orders, you can be arrested for making a threat, search warrants may be issued... and in the case of corporations, restraining orders and injunctions. Like here. This is all very standard stuff. There's absolutely nothing exceptional about the court process in this particular case.

by crazygringo

1/21/2026 at 11:27:32 PM

>On January 2, the music companies asked for a temporary restraining order, and the court granted it the same day.

That pretty much tells me all about what courts care about. Can't get TRO's when the government is attacking its people, but when there's a sniff of sharing music? Instant hammer.

EDIT: to answer a response I got about "courts aren't supposed to 'care'", that's the point of a TRO:

>To obtain a TRO, a party must convince the judge that they will suffer immediate irreparable injury unless the order is issued.

TRO's are rare and losing it just means you need to wait for the actual court case. That's why I'm making such a big deal of this. Getting a TRO the same day because maybe one day some website will have archives of music files just shows how out of touch the justice system is with tech.

by johnnyanmac

1/22/2026 at 4:02:51 AM

> Getting a TRO the same day because maybe one day some website will have archives of music files just shows how out of touch the justice system is with tech.

Huh? It's not a "maybe one day", it was a public announcement by AA that they were absolutely going to do this soon.

And TRO's are exactly for this, when irreparable harm might occur. Nothing out of touch at all.

Now, granted the site still operates under other domains. But it's certainly expected that they would block the domain controlled by a US TLD, i.e. do the little they can. Really, what else would you possibly expect?

by crazygringo

1/22/2026 at 4:23:25 AM

>it was a public announcement by AA that they were absolutely going to do this soon.

"soon" isn't good enough for your typical TRO. To emphasize, "immediate, irreparable damage". And even if it was tomorrow, you really need to be unaware of the internet to argue that dumping a few more torrents into the wild is causing "irreparable damage". Do any of us really buy that?

>Really, what else would you possibly expect?

A TRO to be denied as usual because a few more torrents is not going to bankrupt a billion dollar music industry and to proceed at a later time like anyone else in the legal system?

If denying a TRO of someone illegally deported to a foreign prison isn't a high enough bar, you're not convincing me some torrents is.

by johnnyanmac

1/21/2026 at 11:38:41 PM

Law is made of people and politics touches everything.

Even with separate of powers, lobbies make sure those they represent get good treatments.

by hirako2000

1/21/2026 at 11:59:27 PM

I guess this is a naive question, but where are the lobbies that care about the people? Or even common decency at this point? It really feels like people are treating the US less as an investment and more like a sinking ship to abandon. And they were the ones that shot the holes to begin with.

by johnnyanmac

1/22/2026 at 7:52:36 AM

There aren't any, everyone's out for themselves, further diluting any soft power the masses had. After like 99% of the population doesn't have a stock value associated, might as well join the Mobile Infantry at this point.

by stoneforger

1/22/2026 at 11:27:02 PM

There are plenty. The issue is funding thus even cumulatively have less impact than say, APAC.

Also "the people" have a lot of different things they individually care about, and aren't well organized around those either.

by hirako2000

1/22/2026 at 11:42:15 AM

Depending on the jurisdiction, you can absolutely be punished even if you were only in the planning stage of the heist.

by machomaster

1/22/2026 at 12:46:20 PM

"I'm not taking anybody's side here, as to what copyright law ought to be, but Spotify isn't abusing the legal process here".

Normally, only those who own one or more of the exclusive rights in copyright can actually enforce. Spotify does not own copyright in the music involved in the archive, unless they created some of it (which would be an interesting story, actually - spotify competing with its own artists).

So normally, they would not be able to sue for copyright related violations against anyone.

The other plaintiffs (record companies) are not abusing legal process, but it is unclear what spotify is doing in this lawsuit.

They almost certainly do not own meaningful copyright in the metadata, either, and that would be a bad precedent to see set.

by DannyBee

1/22/2026 at 1:56:41 PM

This is not unusual. Spotify is included because it is a relevant source of evidence as the custodian of the data. It improves the narrative that the data wasn't just indexed but obtained illegally.

by fny

1/21/2026 at 10:37:36 PM

Pretty ironic considering they bootstrapped the service with pirated music. But they've never actually cared about music — they started as an ad platform and music was the cheapest option for them to attract eyeballs.

by cdrnsf

1/21/2026 at 10:47:05 PM

"Spotify" literally means "put ads on things".

It's not obvious to US English speakers but "spot" was ad industry jargon and became the word for "TV commercial" in several European languages. It's so gross that this ever slid through as a brand for a music app. We've descended so far...Music app branding started with Wesley Willis jokes!

by holmesworcester

1/21/2026 at 10:53:04 PM

My first language is US English and I am familiar with that usage of the word "spot", but didn't make the connection to "Spotify" until reading your comment.

This reminds me of the phenomenon of imported words being used in another language, but using a less common definitions of the word. For example I'm told "Oldtimer" is a vintage car in German, but most Americans would say it was an older or experienced person. Maybe "Spotify" could also mean something giving you acne.

by asveikau

1/21/2026 at 10:53:00 PM

That's a fun theory but there's no evidence that was their intention with the name...

From what they've said, it's about "spotting" and "identifying" music and music trends. But it seems like mostly it was just a somewhat nonsense word that was easy to remember and whose domain name was available.

Especially since it's popular as a paid service without ads.

by crazygringo

1/22/2026 at 9:18:57 AM

In finnish, if you google for "spotti", first hit leads to "MTV SPOTTI". MTV is local tv channel and "spotti" is their advertisement portal to purchase their ad services. Second hit leads to "crossword puzzle" site that lists the word "spotti" with multiple explanations that refers to advertisement. Of course spotti has other meanings but its a term used for ads.. I do not know the etymology of that word in finnish but Finland and Sweden do share a lot of words , specifically when spoken.

So, while "spotify" meaning to add ads, might be fun theory, it does make a lot of sense from nordics point of view..

by rasjani

1/22/2026 at 11:46:51 AM

Finnish and Swedish are totally different languages. They are not even in the same language group.

Swedish is Scandinavian/Germanic, close to Norwegian, etc (Finland is Nordic, but is not Scandinavian). Finnish is Finno-Ugric, close to Estonian and Hungarian (yes).

by machomaster

1/21/2026 at 10:57:22 PM

I love random folk etymologies, especially when they posit sinister conspiracies along the way -- thanks for the concise correction. Wikipedia confirms on both counts:

  According to Ek, the company's title was initially misheard from a name shouted by Lorentzon. Later they conceived a portmanteau of "spot" and "identify".
It also kinda blows my mind how common it is to listen to a ton of Spotify without paying, NGL! It just seems like such an absurd value proposition to me, even now as it matures from its growth days. All music??

by bbor

1/21/2026 at 11:45:01 PM

In any case they have an agreement with copyright holders. Anna Archive does not.

IP laws are broken, keep extending protection, and do not prevent distribution exclusivity.

I could sell a license to Bob who can sell my arts to you. But I won't give a license to Alice to even be able to enjoy the art for the fee I charged Bob, and I can tell Bob to do the same and not give it away to Alice at any cost. The law would say that's fine, and let's even arrest Bob if he ever sells to Alice.

by hirako2000

1/22/2026 at 6:07:27 AM

Legality is not morality. These laws in particular happen to not only be harmful, but also in direct opposition to the ostensible spirit of this board

by bbor

1/22/2026 at 11:19:58 AM

This board is a discussion place for founders of YC companies that happens to also be open to the public.

by direwolf20

1/22/2026 at 3:49:17 PM

Good thing that there are some people to counterbalance that, then.

by selfhoster11

1/23/2026 at 4:42:21 AM

That is its origin, not its nature. Shareholders do not a community make :)

by bbor

1/22/2026 at 1:09:25 PM

And all participants shape that spirit, otherwise that would be a cult.

by hirako2000

1/22/2026 at 1:08:03 PM

I thought of my comment aligning with that.

by hirako2000

1/21/2026 at 11:14:33 PM

Wikipedia says

  Ek's initial pitch to Lorentzon was not initially related to music, but rather a way for streaming content such as video, digital films, images or music to drive advertising revenue.
So yes, they were always intending to get revenue from ads. And yes, the initial pitch included other types of media too. But I don't think we can call Spotify "an ad platform" that "never actually cared about music" any more than we could call Ars Technica "an ad platform that never actually cared about tech news."

by surround

1/22/2026 at 11:50:17 AM

Did you know that Ars in Ars Technica stands for Ass, showing how badly they really thought of technology?

/s

by machomaster

1/22/2026 at 2:20:54 PM

Sarcasm doesn't mean bad jokes.

by PokemonNoGo

1/23/2026 at 1:01:18 AM

And this is exactly why I had to use /s. Because some people would not understand that it was weitten tongue-in-cheek, while some others would fail to see the larger context and confuse my sarcasm with a simple joke (sure, as a joke it is bad; and that's precicely because it was optimized to be sarcastic, not joke-funny).

by machomaster

1/22/2026 at 9:04:49 AM

Literally soulseek with ads where some dudes in Stockholm siphon off the lions share of the music industry’s revenues for building a client. The absolute nerve and cheek.

by gizajob

1/22/2026 at 1:51:19 PM

They entered a legal agreement with STIM (Swedish equivalent of RIAA) that allowed them to use whatever during a closed beta period for the artists that that were represented by them.

But I get you, doing research is hard.

by lysace

1/21/2026 at 10:16:07 PM

Recent and related. Others?

Anna's Archive loses .org domain after surprise suspension - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46497164 - Jan 2026 (358 comments)

Spotify reportedly investigating Anna's Archive's scraping of their library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46355793 - Dec 2025 (82 comments)

Backing up Spotify - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46338339 - Dec 2025 (701 comments)

by dang

1/21/2026 at 11:20:44 PM

IMO also recent and related: NVIDIA Contacted Anna’s Archive to Secure Access to Millions of Pirated Books - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46677628 - Jan 2026 (153 comments)

by amatecha

1/22/2026 at 1:15:34 AM

Pretty much where we are in the world. You can scrape copyrighted works and re-jigger them in your own database to spit out a fascimile of art. But you can't "point" to where these scapers are going.

by johnnyanmac

1/21/2026 at 10:40:44 PM

I don't understand the sealing and ex-parte motions in this case. It looks completely corrupt. They're claiming that the archive would have released all the material publicly if they were allowed to know an injunction was about to be filed against them.

Yet all those songs certainly have illegal copies already being distributed on the internet. So what was the actual harm being prevented here? I cannot understand how they hoodwinked a court into this misguided procedure.

by themafia

1/21/2026 at 10:50:58 PM

The harm being done is millions of dollars for VCs and music studios.

Billionaires and enterprises want to see consumers spending to return their investment.

The presence of other - dispersed - illegal material doesn’t diminish said returns too much, this central dump would have set precedent and had garnered massive attention.

This is the capitalist way.

by thenaturalist

1/21/2026 at 11:41:13 PM

> They're claiming that the archive would have released all the material publicly if they were allowed to know an injunction was about to be filed against them.

I mean, the archive themselves publicly stated their intention to release all the material, without reference to any injunction. So the implication is trivially true, as a logician would say.

by snowmobile

1/21/2026 at 11:06:57 PM

> Yet all those songs certainly have illegal copies already being distributed on the internet. So what was the actual harm being prevented here?

There's a huge difference between a ton of individual torrents or files you need to individually search for, identify, of varying quality, that may be mislabeled and have other sorts of quality issues, and which in no way approach "all" music...

...vs a single, shockingly comprehensive repository of uniformly high-quality music which does, in fact, approach "all" music.

If I wanted to start a pirate music service, it would become vastly easier with this particular repository. Many orders of magnitude easier. That's the actual harm.

by crazygringo

1/21/2026 at 11:18:34 PM

Lossless pirate archives also still exist if you know where to look. Not saying you're wrong, but from a truly material angle, someone dedicated to finding an archive with enough music to start a pirate site need only join one of the existing lossless pirate sites and copy theirs. I don't see how Anna's making it easier negates the fact that it can already be done

by queenkjuul

1/21/2026 at 11:54:55 PM

I dont think the idea that it can be already done matters though. You just have to show harm or intent to harm, and the archive had it.

Selective prosecution isn't a strong defense in civil court.

by s1artibartfast

1/22/2026 at 1:18:48 AM

For a normal case, maybe. for a TRO, it does matter. And they got a TRO the same day they asked on Jan 2nd. That's an oddly concerning move.

by johnnyanmac

1/23/2026 at 3:34:26 AM

I think it is pretty standard if the other party doesnt show up in court. Did they?

by s1artibartfast

1/22/2026 at 6:18:15 AM

Oh yeah i figure the courts have all sorts of ways of fucking over whoever they please. I just mean logically - they haven't enabled anything that could'nt already be done, not really

by queenkjuul

1/21/2026 at 9:42:49 PM

what‘s in it for spotify? i can‘t think of a single person who‘d stop paying for streaming services (music) in favour of going back to illegally download or (or even legally purchase) songs & managing their own library. m a y b e some devs would. but those thinking about it, wouldn‘t be stopped like that. i am thinking about it, yet i just renewed my subscription because i lack time & motivation to crawl down yet another rabbit hole of diy.

by endofreach

1/21/2026 at 10:26:22 PM

I will never START paying for Spotify. I like my music and so I like to know my music, I have no problem curating my collection, chasing rare works for artists I really like. I enjoy the process, I enjoy the result, I enjoy that I own it. I really don't see why I would rather spend hundreds a year for the privilege of owning nothing at all in the end, while being prescribed what I shall listen to, when and where.

by ezst

1/21/2026 at 10:56:20 PM

My old mp3 collection is too big for my mobile phone and I did not set up a private streaming solution yet. So out of convenience, I also used spotify. Stream anywhere anything is nice.

And I did enjoy finding new artists through the algorithm there .. but I do made up my mind about letting go of the concenience and owning all my music again. It is a big effort, though and I don't enjoy it so much like you.

by lukan

1/22/2026 at 12:03:42 PM

I encourage you to have a look at subsonic-compatible servers (navidrome, airsonic & forks), that's a good compromise IMO/E when you've got to pick what music you want to carry with you.

by ezst

1/22/2026 at 1:44:52 AM

Seems like a reasonable hobby, people love doing this, but idk that not doing something you already wouldn't be inclined to do carries much weight.

Almost like how people who haven't moved out of their hometown cite all sorts of reasons or apparent faults of the place they haven't moved to, like it's too expensive; it's too rainy; it's too busy; it's not sunny enough; but really, they weren't in the business of leaving anyway, because they're comfortable or don't know how to make friends, or they stubbornly try to love a place they actually hate, or they have family there and a support structure, or they have no ambition, or they actually just like the place. Either way, the moving goalposts and random critiques don't matter, it's not the hypothetical destination's burden to court someone who won't make that leap anyway, but there may be a select few fence sitters who are just waiting for a push.

I don't think Spotify's main objective is to persuade hobbyist music collectors to stop, but rather it's to persuade people who want to access music anywhere to pay for the service, which may or may not be someone forced to ditch their vinyl collection or Zune. Voting with your wallet only matters if the service you actually might pay for or are paying for stops being a compelling product.

by brailsafe

1/21/2026 at 10:43:40 PM

I'm old enough to have an mp3 collection, so I haven't needed spotify. They don't have 20% of the tracks in my playlist and their integration of local audio has been steadily eroded to be almost unusable now (i.e. it's completely separate, doesn't show up in regular search, playlists etc.). They also push audiobooks and sponsored results in my face even on the Premium subscription, and their UI sucks.

If you already have a collection and are reasonably content in what you listen to, topping it up with a few albums a year is not that hard.

Or just use youtube music!

by rjh29

1/21/2026 at 11:01:29 PM

Even if you have an mp3 collection, the streaming apps are good for discovery, recommendations, and generating playlists.

There are probably good local solutions for the last one especially, but a convenient UI that's already on all your devices helps.

by asveikau

1/22/2026 at 10:45:11 AM

> Even if you have an mp3 collection, the streaming apps are good for discovery, recommendations ...

No they are not. Hi there. We noticed you have been listening to Rage Against the Machine, Metallica and Deftones. Why not have a listen of this Robbie Williams song too ... blasts out some pop song at extra high volume.

by hostyle

1/22/2026 at 2:49:55 PM

I haven't had this experience at all.

by asveikau

1/21/2026 at 11:09:39 PM

Absolutely - although the free plan (or free trial) of Spotify/YouTube are good enough for that.

Spotify is certainly convenient especially being multi-device, but after a few months you've probably exhausted its recommendations.

by rjh29

1/21/2026 at 10:18:35 PM

Many people are cancelling Spotify among my friends, even very "non-technical" folks. For me I've just gone back to radio or Youtube:ing a few songs for free here and there. Paying the cost of a lunch every month is just not worth it anymore for subscription services.

by snowmobile

1/21/2026 at 10:23:32 PM

Exactly this. Increasing prices with worsening service and feature bloat combined with questionable ethics made it an easy decision to cancel.

by ulrashida

1/21/2026 at 10:42:49 PM

I know people who recently canceled, but I think it has more to do with them raising the price.

by kilroy123

1/21/2026 at 10:51:41 PM

Yeah I'm not saying my friends who cancelled are going to torrent music like it's the 2000's, but when so much music is freely available on the web, why pay? For me it was mainly that the app kept getting worse though.

by snowmobile

1/21/2026 at 10:31:59 PM

This is also a big party of why artists don’t earn shit.

Spotify will never be able to pay out enough if people don’t think this music is worth paying for.

They want access to every new album but refuse to pay how much a single new CD would have cost back in the day

by parpfish

1/21/2026 at 10:45:35 PM

Aside from all the middle men nibbling at artist take, its also a symptom of trading on fundamentally un-scarce resources. A better business model is selling access to the scarce things like the artist themselves. Trying to maintain stranglehold on a particular order of zeros and ones is always going to be tough.

by pluralmonad

1/21/2026 at 11:55:24 PM

That’s part of the reason that artists have made a bigger push toward selling merch as a means of making a living. But that feels so arbitrary and unsustainable to me.

Why should I buy a tshirt from somebody because I like their music? Fashion design is its own unrelated art form.

by parpfish

1/21/2026 at 10:50:23 PM

Every entertainment market is saturated. Even if every creative endeavour stopped now, there would still be more freely available content to last more then any individual human life span.

Unless you’re the type of person that actively considers them a fan of something and goes out of their way to consume a specific niche, there isn’t much reason to pay much, or anything for entertainment.

by doesnt_know

1/22/2026 at 1:27:45 AM

>Unless you’re the type of person that actively considers them a fan of something

to be fair, that's a billion dollar business of an audience. Bandcamp is still a thing because people like that exist. So I wouldn't readily dismiss that.

But yes. We're in an age where people treat TV shows as "second screen entertainment", the silver screen is dying out, and where Spotify is flooding its library with white noise and AI slop. And people at best shrug. There's never been less respect for the arts, and it reflects in wider consumer patterns. Any future artists will need to appeal to a shrinkingly few fanbase of those who care about quality.

by johnnyanmac

1/22/2026 at 12:29:23 PM

If you get a Spotify subscription to support small artists, you'll be in for a rude awakening once you realize how Spotify allocates your funds.

Hint: Your subscription pays for the listening habits of free users. Who do those free users listen to?

The reason why Spotify is a raw deal for the artists you listen to is the same reason why it is possible to bot listens of your AI generated songs and get out more money than was paid for by the bot's subscription.

The entire Spotify business model is very peculiar in how stupid and wasteful it is and who the beneficiaries are.

What you should do instead is give yourself a fixed music budget, export your stream counts and subscribe to their patreons in proportion to how much you listened to them.

by imtringued

1/22/2026 at 1:22:16 AM

Spotify is a model where the artist suffers, the company itself works on a slim margin, and the record labels gets the lion's share. It's pretty much the worst case scenario business.

The issue even goes back to the days of CD's. The artist still wouldn't get that much back compared to the label publishing the disc. even in 2000 is was still more profitable to buy a tshirt than a CD from the artist.

I'm not very well versed in this area, but clearly something needs to change. Being able to independently published helps, but Spotify's model does indeed make it harder to sell your own albums despite it being easier than ever to distribute it without a middleman.

by johnnyanmac

1/21/2026 at 10:43:36 PM

> This is also a big party of why artists don’t earn shit.

The pie that Spotify divides up among the artists is a global one. It's not like you listen to one artist, so they get your 10 bucks every month. You're paying Taylor Swift, even though you never listen to her.

by writebetterc

1/21/2026 at 10:56:28 PM

Their prorata payment scheme isn’t inherently good or bad.

If I listen to obscure indie band all month, some of my money will go to Taylor swift. But all those swifties are also paying obscure indie band.

by parpfish

1/22/2026 at 1:30:10 AM

it's not bad by itself, but I argue the opaque structure of it is horrendous. Especially in financial matters, you should be able to estimate how much money you get if you put X effort in and get Y metrics. But even getting a proper Y isn't straightforward, let alone Z payout.

by johnnyanmac

1/21/2026 at 10:35:28 PM

I run a Navidrome server I stream my own music from. I tag everything with Mp3tag and have a shell script to organize and upload the tagged files. Not all of the music I listen to regularly is on Spotify and their treatment of artists is abominable.

by cdrnsf

1/21/2026 at 10:48:39 PM

How much piracy do you do?

by eleventen

1/21/2026 at 10:59:10 PM

I've ripped and archived CDs for well over a decade, purchase from Bandcamp and — if I can't find a way to buy it — I'll find it and buy a shirt or something from the band as directly as possible.

by cdrnsf

1/21/2026 at 10:23:41 PM

>what‘s in it for spotify?

Their relationship with the labels

by whywhywhywhy

1/21/2026 at 11:25:17 PM

You have to first find spotify in the court docs: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.65...

    ATLANTIC RECORDING CORPORATION;
    ATLANTIC MUSIC GROUP LLC; BAD
    BOY RECORDS LLC; ELEKTRA
    ENTERTAINMENT LLC; ELEKTRA
    ENTERTAINMENT GROUP INC.; FUELED
    BY RAMEN LLC; WARNER MUSIC
    INTERNATIONAL SERVICES LIMITED;
    WARNER RECORDS INC.; WARNER
    RECORDS LLC; SONY MUSIC
    ENTERTAINMENT; ARISTA MUSIC;
    ARISTA RECORDS, LLC; ZOMBA
    RECORDING LLC; UMG RECORDINGS,
    INC.; CAPITOL RECORDS, LLC; and
    SPOTIFY USA INC.,

       Plaintiffs,
ANd then you could read the decision https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.65...:

    Factual Background - III

    The Record Company Plaintiffs’ business model relies
    in significant part on the licensing of their catalogs of sound recordings
    to legitimate streaming services like Spotify.
IMO Spotify couldn't care less. The actual owners of music care.

by troupo

1/21/2026 at 10:44:18 PM

Cozy secondary relationships with music labels. Payola goes one way and industry demands go the other.

Since "owners" take such a big chunk (50%) of paid royalties for streaming there is a strong incentive to only play music that is "owned" by labels and not directly by artists and performers. Controlling the number of "spins" an song or album of theirs gets is still a huge concern of the labels.

by themafia

1/21/2026 at 11:27:09 PM

> here is a strong incentive to only play music that is "owned" by labels and not directly by artists and performers.

Spotify has exactly zero music "directly by artists and performers". Even indie artists have to go through distributors and labels. Because without "owners" that own 60-80% of all world music, and that Spotify pays 70% of revenue to there would be no Spotify (or any music streaming service).

by troupo

1/22/2026 at 4:04:56 AM

> Even indie artists have to go through distributors and labels.

Is it impossible for an artist to own their own label?

> or any music streaming service

That doesn't seem to follow from any part of your argument.

by themafia

1/22/2026 at 8:01:13 AM

> That doesn't seem to follow from any part of your argument.

What happens when the Big Four pull their content from your platform because you started bypassing them?

by troupo

1/22/2026 at 3:03:13 AM

You don't need to hand over any ownership or % of earnings if you self-publish and pay a distributor to put your album on the streaming platforms.

by crtasm

1/22/2026 at 8:05:22 AM

You don't many do. And, again, Spotify doesn't pay money to artists directly, but to rights holders and distributors.

by troupo

1/27/2026 at 6:15:59 PM

In this situation the artist is the rights holder.

by crtasm

1/21/2026 at 11:10:57 PM

> what‘s in it for spotify?

Honestly, Spotify itself probably couldn't care less, for the obvious reasons you say.

But the music labels sure do. Their contracts with Spotify surely require it to implement appropriate DRM, stop all attempted piracy, etc. If Spotify wants to be on good negotiating terms with labels, they have absolutely no choice but to take as much legal action as possible.

by crazygringo

1/21/2026 at 10:56:14 PM

I put Rockbox on a non-techie friend’s new mp3 player just the other day. Some folks absolutely went back to buying/pirating music after the whole Spotify playing ads for ICE thing. It’s apparently fun curating a collection like in the olden days, and sites like fmhy have gotten pretty popular recently.

by jrflowers

1/21/2026 at 11:41:17 PM

Spotify cancelled my subscription. I started off with a Spotify partner subscription with my wife, which grandfathered into some other thing, like a family subscription, and then whatever I had got cancelled. Meanwhile I found a new local radio station has started playing 60% of what I like, some new (to me) joint venture thats a web first marketing company and they bought a bunch of radio stations to add local radio advertising to their list of services. Between spotify with ads, radio with ads, I am listening to radio, while planning out how to most easily go back to just having my favourites on my phone or maybe even an mp3 player.

by protocolture

1/21/2026 at 10:28:09 PM

IF I were still a Spotify user - this would be the nail in the coffin. Not that the founder wouldn't give me enough reason. But they lost me due to other reasons.

I am still paying for streaming, though. Still. Not sure if it is really worth it - and once I have my local mp3 collection available for myself - not sure, if I need a paid streaming service. I am getting too old and I return more and more to the songs I grew up with. And to be honest - if I would be missing anything, I could easily yt-dlp it, store it on my server and have it available ti myself via self hosted streaming.

I am loosing more and more interest in streaming. For video and music.

by sdoering

1/21/2026 at 11:04:26 PM

I think the main use-case for the metadata-enriched 300TB archive is training AI models like suno. Anyone torrenting music for personal consumption had higher quality sources available already.

by Retr0id

1/22/2026 at 1:33:28 AM

NVidia seems to agree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46677628

Their response to litigation?

> NVIDIA defended its actions as fair use, noting that books are nothing more than statistical correlations to its AI models.

It's barely veiled these days how little they care for art.

by johnnyanmac

1/22/2026 at 1:08:44 PM

> i can‘t think of a single person who‘d stop paying for streaming services (music) in favour of going back to illegally download or (or even legally purchase) songs

I'd love to self host my music, but curating my collection is a lot of work. I made several attempts, but looking for music I like was too much work for me. If getting "illegal" music becomes easier I'll definitely eventually do this.

by integralid

1/21/2026 at 11:58:37 PM

I would go back in an instant. I think a lot of people would if it is convenient. Furthermore, all someone has to do is make a Spotify clone to interact with the archive and you have consumed their entire business.

Even if you didnt want a DIY solution, I bet you would accept a free clone, along with every other customer

by s1artibartfast

1/24/2026 at 9:24:47 AM

i dont think its much harder. but we got used to a different convenience standard regarding the consumption (of our music/library).

by endofreach

1/21/2026 at 11:22:16 PM

Lol i say it to my friends all the time, "if music were as easy to pirate as 20 years ago I'd already be back"

Credit where it's due, Spotify made it a lot harder to find pirated music in good quality

by queenkjuul

1/22/2026 at 11:21:19 AM

Aren't there illegal tools for downloading music from Spotify?

by direwolf20

1/21/2026 at 10:51:16 PM

I cancelled my Spotify the other day in favour of listening to my own archive. I’m admittedly an outlier though.

by have_faith

1/21/2026 at 10:35:38 PM

Perhaps worried about downloads being used for training music models

by CryptoBanker

1/21/2026 at 10:58:30 PM

Can’t have competitors when they inevitably move in that direction themselves.

by hsbauauvhabzb

1/21/2026 at 9:10:07 PM

Unfortunately for Spotify, court orders are ineffective against foreign nationals sharing information. Copyright enforcement is as futile as the encryption "export restrictions" the US and other countries tried in the 90s and early 2000s.

by ronsor

1/21/2026 at 10:22:56 PM

Since they don't "own" the data they lost, only "rent" it, they probably have to be seen doing something about it, lest they face the wrath of record companies.

by snowmobile

1/21/2026 at 10:32:26 PM

I have a really hard time imagining the record companies giving a shit about this, this isn't a pre-release leak. All the valuable content is already freely and easily available for download on the internet.

by JasonADrury

1/21/2026 at 10:42:58 PM

It's performance art all the way down - it repeatedly states they are not happy about piracy and will come after anyone doing it.

This isn't aimed at pirates as much as it's aimed at non-pirates, especially companies with significant assets.

They know full well pirates don't care, but it's a message to any company or entity seen as "too friendly" with pirates or that enables pirates to do their thing.

by Nextgrid

1/22/2026 at 11:42:13 AM

I doubt anyone in the industry really cares at this point, and in the end it's a rather small group of massive companies whose opinions Spotify cares about.

by JasonADrury

1/22/2026 at 1:36:56 AM

The PR of being "hard on pirates" matters a lot more than any losses they may take, imagined or otherwise. I just hate how fast courts will act on this compared to matters of literal life and death.

by johnnyanmac

1/21/2026 at 10:55:53 PM

Yeah, but TFA notes how Anna's Archive is dependent on US-based infrastructure, including Cloudflare.

As much as I love Anna's Archive, I feel like this Spotify move was a misstep on their part. The music industry seems far scarier than the publishing industry when it comes to copyright suits, which means they have a lot to lose here by poking the bear, but there are already plenty of places to find pirated music, which means they also don't have much to gain.

by cryzinger

1/21/2026 at 11:49:29 PM

It's a cool publicity stunt for Anna's, and perhaps the hackers responsible for getting the data simply wanted to show it off and leave Spotify with some egg on their face. I know I wouldn't be able to stop myself from publishing it if I was in their position, foolish as it may be.

by snowmobile

1/22/2026 at 3:52:31 PM

I disagree. Music needs to be archived just as much as books and other publications. Yes, there is heat, but lots of people support them.

by selfhoster11

1/21/2026 at 10:41:02 PM

The Wikipedia page for Anna's archive was a lot more helpful leading people to the goods than the .org domain was.

Anna always knew the .org domain was vulnerable. Why wouldn't they?

by crumpled

1/22/2026 at 11:24:09 AM

Every pirate site operator knows you don't use .org because the registry is very happy to take down pirate sites without much evidence. It's surprising this one lasted this long.

by direwolf20

1/22/2026 at 6:53:47 AM

Only Big Tech is allowed to pirate

by bni

1/21/2026 at 11:18:17 PM

Can anyone recommend a music discovery service that isn't garbage? I fled to Spotify from Pandora because it kept recommending me the exact same songs, but now Spotify does basically the same thing.

In the age of machine learning, I'm really surprised there aren't superhuman music recommendation algorithms. Or maybe there are, and these algorithms simply don't serve the corporate interests. But then where are the open-source alternatives?

by Paracompact

1/21/2026 at 11:33:26 PM

> In the age of machine learning, I'm really surprised there aren't superhuman music recommendation algorithms.

Because music is extremely hard to quantify. What do you quantify it on? See https://everynoise.com/ (the mess on the page is quantifying by just three or four out of 17 IIRC parameters) and their small doc on it: https://everynoise.com/EverynoiseIntro.pdf

And doing that at scale across hundreds of millions of users quickly becomes prohibitively expensive. So companies simplify, and reach for simpler solutions, unfortunately.

by troupo

1/22/2026 at 11:22:38 AM

This is true for most things that have recommendation engines.

by direwolf20

1/22/2026 at 3:09:57 AM

I still pay for Spotify, but nowadays 99% of my music consumption are local FM radios, plus mainstream webradios [radioParadise, FIP, BBC6, NTS]. I sometimes Shazam things, but rarely have the time to listen them back on Spotify. My attention time is limited by other things [:those stupid real-life stuff every normal person was praising in the old times: kids, family, work, burnout, failing cars, gardenning. And sleep!]

by lolive

1/22/2026 at 3:14:40 AM

And then what’s the next comeback, you boomer? BBS? Tabletop roleplaying-games? Reading books? #comeOooon

by lolive

1/22/2026 at 2:10:40 PM

> Can anyone recommend a music discovery service that isn't garbage?

I enjoy using last.fm, although it's not their focus these days. Sign up, connect it to Spotify or whatever you use (incl. a long list of players of local music), after a day or so it'll learn what you like and you can create playlists with suggestions and export them, or browser around recommended artists etc.

by adrianmsmith

1/22/2026 at 8:45:25 AM

Recommending new material involves risk. Once these companies go big and mature, they hate risk. They hate risk in hiring (taking a chance in people) and they certainly hate risk in algorithms.

by code51

1/21/2026 at 11:39:38 PM

It seems like they all do the loop eventually.

I liked Tidal's recommendations.

I went back to last.fm, music stores, friends recommendations, and music/TV scores(a lot of good movie sound folks are amazing musicians).

by chneu

1/21/2026 at 11:32:45 PM

I've heard good things about Tidal (https://tidal.com) but it's not open source afaik.

by miriam_catira

1/21/2026 at 10:41:34 PM

Why aren't they distributing things via i2p or something like it instead of clearnet?

by seany

1/22/2026 at 1:26:47 AM

That's what I'm also always asking myself. Same thing with NexusSTC

by hermanzegerman

1/22/2026 at 1:28:47 PM

I just tried to download a podcast series from Spotify today, and even this turned out to be a massive pain: no dice on gallery-dl, yt-dlp, and the browser doesn't have a dedicated download option, even when logged in.

I was redirected to the Windows app to download an episode, and then I got denied from using the app because I was on a VPN with a different location than the one they had on file for me.

Genuinely wonder how much podcast history we're going to lose, if we're just making walled gardens out of RSS feeds at this point. Hope someone does back up the Spotify-exclusive podcasts somewhere.

by kmfrk

1/21/2026 at 11:25:21 PM

All in all Copyright did and is doing is more harm anything else.

by zouhair

1/22/2026 at 7:08:05 AM

Copyright was originally about protecting the public from corporations. An author had no incentive to write because a corporation with a printing press would mass produce the work for a fraction of the cost without paying the author. Copyright meant corporations couldn't do that.

But since since at least the 90s copyright has been about protecting corporations from the public. This fits the general trend of the last 50 years or so. Corporations are amassing more and more power and the public has very little.

by globular-toast

1/21/2026 at 10:33:43 PM

Technical question: I run my own Pi hole dns server. Is it possible to just add an A record for it? What are you guys doing to get around this?

by xmonkee

1/22/2026 at 6:59:52 AM

Yes, you can. Can be done in the GUI of PiHole.

by globular-toast

1/22/2026 at 8:31:08 AM

Big AI: "OK guys, did everybody get what they wanted? Get out, we're pulling up the drawbridge"

by PeterStuer

1/21/2026 at 10:32:37 PM

Deezer has in its onboarding flow a pretty cool "get your lists from spotify" feature. from all liked/currated songs - a few thousands - it could not match about 2.

by franze

1/21/2026 at 10:49:01 PM

You can also download FLAC or 320k MP3 from Deezer with deemix.

by walthamstow

1/21/2026 at 10:38:28 PM

could you expand on this please? if I understood correctly then Deezer fails to match songs from a list of thousands? thanks

by DyslexicAtheist

1/21/2026 at 10:55:17 PM

I understood it as out of a few thousand songs, Deezer only failed to match 2.

by xvokcarts

1/22/2026 at 12:57:47 AM

Tried moving there something like a year ago, the service didn't work at all, iirc the UI was awful and confusing and once I got around it, there was a lot of my tracks that couldn't be imported. I hate that Spotify is the one service I still can't part with, self-hosting nextcloud emails and such.

by hollow-moe

1/21/2026 at 10:47:53 PM

Seems that the Spotify torrents are now unavailable until further notice. bummer

by alessandroberna

1/22/2026 at 1:58:20 AM

The music one was never available but the metadata one can be found and still works.

by seized

1/21/2026 at 10:56:58 PM

Funny how .se is up

by heraldgeezer

1/22/2026 at 10:34:48 AM

sharing knowledge for free is for the improvement of mankind. it fights the impoverishment of human intellect through control.

sharing music and art for free... not so much.

even if i put all my own music for free, yada yada. I do think there is a line and not everything should just be taken and put out for free.

the benefit to human progress should outweigh that damage to the artists or owners of said material.

i think we can all agree that most artists in that bundle are smalltime struggling artists. (the vast majority of something is never its peak afterall...).

is it really so important to listen some artist for free to destroy the income of thousands upon thousands of others? i dont think it adds anything important in our lives.

by saidnooneever

1/22/2026 at 11:24:39 AM

Artists don't get meaningful revenue from streaming. Only distribution companies do.

by direwolf20