Hacker left feeling yellow after stealing music from Coldplay

A hacker who stole unreleased music from artists including Coldplay, Upsahl and Melanie Martinez and sold it online, has been sentenced.

Skylar Taylor Dalziel, 22, of Winchester Gardens, Luton, obtained the music by illegally accessing several cloud storage accounts linked to the artists. An investigation by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police revealed that Dalziel pocketed around £42,000 by selling the tracks.

Dalziel pleaded guilty on 4 October 2024 at Luton Crown Court to nine copyright offences and four computer misuse offences. She was sentenced at the same court on 3 January 2025 to 21 months imprisonment, suspended for 24 months, and must also complete 180 hours of unpaid work.

Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt, from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police, said:

“Stealing copyrighted material for your own financial gain is illegal. It jeopardises the work of artists and the livelihoods of the people who work with them to create and release their music. It’s estimated that this type of criminal activity contributes to over 80,000 job losses each year.

“Today’s sentencing sends a clear message that we have the ability and tools to locate cyber criminals and hold them to account for their actions. We believe Dalziel was working with suspects overseas and are now working to identify them.”

In June 2021, Sony Music Entertainment reported to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) that a cloud account owned by US artist Upsahl had been compromised. A total of 40 unreleased tracks had been extracted from the account and were being sold online.

The IFPI and the Recording Industry Association of America identified that an account on an online forum was being used to sell unreleased music from artists represented by Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, including Upsahl, Coldplay and Melanie Martinez. The IFPI linked the account to Dalziel and referred the case to PIPCU in June 2022.

After further investigation, officers from PIPCU arrested Dalziel on 9 January 2023 and a search warrant was executed at her home address.

Officers seized three solid-state drives that contained a total of 291,941 music tracks. A spreadsheet, which showed that Dalziel had sold tracks to a number of customers, was also found.

During her police interview, Dalziel answered “no comment” to all questions asked.

A review of Dalziel’s PayPal account and bank account showed that she had received payments worth a total of £42,049 from April 2021 to January 2023.

Dalziel transferred some of this money to a number of bank accounts in the US. Officers from PIPCU are currently working with Homeland Security Investigations to identify the people linked to the accounts.

Richard Partridge, Specialist Prosecutor of the Crown Prosecution Service, said:

“Dalziel had complete disregard for the musicians’ creativity and hard work producing original songs and the subsequent potential loss of earnings.

“This type of activity doesn’t just impact on the artists themselves but also on employees of the record companies involved. She selfishly used their music to make money for herself by selling it on the dark web.”

Notes to editors

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that at least 86,300 jobs were lost in the UK in 2016 due to counterfeiting and piracy.