While the shadow library says it aims to preserve humanity’s culture, its pirated content has wider implications for the future of streaming.

According to Anna’s Archive, the data grab represents more than 99 percent of listens on Spotify, making it “the largest publicly available music metadata database with 256 million tracks.” It’s also “the world’s first ‘preservation archive’ for music which is fully open,” with 86 million music files, the archive boasted.

Music streaming service Spotify said Monday it had disabled accounts from a piracy activist hacker group that claimed to have "backed up" millions of Spotify's music files and metadata.

With its extensive music library and user-friendly interface, Spotify is the world's most popular music streaming service, boasting over 713 million active monthly users. However, despite its massive popularity,