In a startling development, rapper RBX has filed a federal class action lawsuit against Spotify, accusing the streaming platform of allowing bots to fraudulently inflate the stream counts of superstar Drake’s songs. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, claims that Spotify has ignored “billions of fraudulent streams” created by fake users and bots on Drake’s music over the past three and a half years.
The lawsuit alleges that the artificial boosting of Drake’s streams has caused “massive financial harm” to RBX and other legitimate artists, as Spotify’s payouts to artists are based on their share of the total monthly streams. By allowing Drake’s numbers to be artificially inflated, the platform is purportedly taking money away from other artists.
While Drake himself is not accused of any wrongdoing, the lawsuit directly targets Spotify, claiming the company has turned a blind eye to the issue in order to generate more ad revenue from the increased user activity. The filing alleges that some individual Spotify accounts have listened to Drake’s music for “23 hours a day” and that some streams originated from locations with “zero residential addresses.”
However, the lawsuit did not provide specific figures or locations to support these claims, and Spotify has refuted the allegations. In a statement, a Spotify spokesperson said the company heavily invests in combating artificial streaming and that its systems have proven effective, as evidenced by a recent case where a bad actor was indicted for stealing $10 million from streaming services, with only $60,000 coming from Spotify.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, with RBX claiming the fake streams have taken “hundreds of millions of dollars” from him and other artists. This development comes on the heels of Drake’s recent legal battle with Universal Music Group over the release of Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us.”
As the music industry continues to grapple with the challenges of streaming and artificial activity, this lawsuit could have far-reaching implications for Spotify and the broader ecosystem of artists and rights holders.
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