> Specifically, the site’s operator and these third parties are prohibited from scraping WorldCat data, storing or distributing the data on Anna’s Archive websites, and encouraging others to store, use or share this data.
Given the timing, I assumed it was Spotify trying to prevent the release of their dataset but apparently not.
I wonder if spotify cares about it that much. I looked at the article and it says the archive is 160kbps files and 96kbps files, while spotify can stream 320kbps files and recently lossless audio files, and of course there’s the app itself.
They deprecated their audio features endpoint which provided metrics like "danceability". Their ToS also forbids building recommendation engines with that data. So I imagine they're a little protective of at least that section of the metadata dump.
But yeah I agree that the audio file itself probably isn't super important to keep secret. After all, it's not that hard to find cd rips or at worst, a youtube version to download.
I have a personal experience of spotify-users not being the most audiophile audience, to put it mildly. Probably spotify knows that
Spotify ended the golden age of music piracy.
We still live in a golden age of music piracy. It's easier than ever to download anything you ever wanted to listen to without paying a cent. It's just that keeping music locally fell out of fashion and streaming is so easy.