Hacker who sold unreleased Coldplay and Shawn Mendes songs on dark web spared jail
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Police discovered hard drives containing thousands of songs in Skylar Dalziel’s home, including unreleased tracks from Coldplay. A hacker who pocketed £42,000 selling unreleased music from leading musicians on the dark web has been spared jail. Skylar Dalziel, 22, of Luton, has been sentenced to 21 months in prison, suspended for two years, for 14 counts relating to the trading of copyrighted music without the consent of the recording artists or label.
![[Stolen music found on Dalziel’s hard drives included songs from Coldplay]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/10/01/08/newFile-2.jpg)
In a raid of her home last January, police discovered hard drives containing up to 291,941 music tracks, including unreleased songs by Coldplay, Shawn Mendes, Melanie Martinez, Taylor Upsahl, and Bebe Rexha. She had obtained the music by illegally accessing several cloud storage accounts linked to the artists.
![[The hacker has handed a suspended sentence at Luton Crown Court]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/09/18/11/60fc21bd52d4a960637e825594ad76fdY29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzI2NzM5Mzgx-2.23443867.jpg)
Police also found a spreadsheet showing she had sold the tracks to several customers. An investigation had been launched the previous year after the recording industry experts at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry contacted the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police.
The Recording Industry Association of America supplied evidence showing that Dalziel had purchased six music tracks on the dark web which were unreleased and not available for sale and linked to three different record labels. These purchases were made using Bitcoin.
