{"id":10302,"date":"2026-04-15T01:15:34","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T01:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/spotify-and-major-labels-win-322m-in-music-piracy-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T01:15:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T01:15:34","slug":"spotify-and-major-labels-win-322m-in-music-piracy-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/spotify-and-major-labels-win-322m-in-music-piracy-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotify and Major Labels Win $322M in Music Piracy Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tSpotify and the three major label groups have been awarded a nine-figure copyright judgment against the pirate library Anna\u2019s Archive \u2014 though at least for now, the victory is largely symbolic as the site is anonymously operated.<\/p>\n

\n\tA federal judge entered default judgment on Tuesday (April 14) against Anna\u2019s Archive, which announced in a blog post this past December that it had scraped 86 million songs from Spotify and planned to distribute them via a series of bulk torrents. Spotify teamed up with Universal Music Group (UMG), Warner Music Group (WMG) and Sony to sue the site\u2019s shadowy operators for this \u201cbrazen theft\u201d in January.<\/p>\n

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\n\tJudge Jed S. Rakoff granted an immediate restraining order that barred Anna\u2019s Archive from distributing the stolen songs, but the site\u2019s operators never responded to the lawsuit. Undeterred, they released torrents in February that included access to more than 2 billion illegal music files, 120,000 of which were downloaded by Spotify\u2019s lawyers as a test.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, Judge Rakoff is holding Anna\u2019s Archive liable by default for violations of U.S. copyright law. He awarded $300 million in damages to Spotify \u2014 calculated by multiplying 120,000 by $2,500, the maximum damages available for each time that Anna\u2019s Archive circumvented Spotify\u2019s anti-piracy measures. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge also awarded UMG, WMG and Sony a total of $22.2 million, equal to the maximum damages of $150,000 per act of copyright infringement multiplied by 148 major-label owned recordings identified in the Anna\u2019s Archive collection.\u00a0This includes hits by Beyonc\u00e9, Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, Cardi B, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Post Malone, Mariah Carey, Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Shakira, Michael Jackson and U2.<\/p>\n

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\n\tWhile $322.2 million is a big number, it\u2019s unlikely that Spotify or the majors will see this cash any time soon. That\u2019s because the identities of the Anna\u2019s Archive operators remain unknown, making it nearly impossible, at this point,<\/strong> to enforce the money judgment.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe more immediately impactful piece of Tuesday\u2019s default judgment ruling is a permanent injunction that requires internet service providers to perpetually disable the Anna\u2019s Archive website. Yet this too may prove difficult to enforce, since Anna\u2019s Archive has been known to relaunch its operations on new domain names each time one is shut down.<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for Spotify and the labels did not immediately return requests for comment on Tuesday\u2019s judgment.<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
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Spotify and the three major label groups have been awarded a nine-figure copyright judgment against the pirate library Anna\u2019s Archive \u2014 though at least for now, the victory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7731,1423,303,197,593,2500,1217,834],"class_list":["post-10302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-322m","tag-labels","tag-lawsuit","tag-major","tag-music","tag-piracy","tag-spotify","tag-win"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}