"The alleged bot-driven streaming fraud "causes massive financial harm to legitimate artists" and other rights-holders, the lawsuit claims."
"Via a spokesperson, Spotify said it "in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming.""
"The lawsuit alleges that a "non-trivial percentage" of Drake's 37 billion streams "appeared to be the work of a sprawling network of Bot Accounts.""
"If these streams are inauthentic, the lawsuit notes, Drake received royalties that Spotify should have paid to other artists. The cost of "the fraudulent boosting of Drake's music is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars," according to the lawsuit."
A federal class-action was filed in California on November 2 alleging widespread, bot-driven streaming fraud on Spotify that inflates streaming counts and distorts royalty allocations. The lead plaintiff, rapper RBX, represents a class of similarly situated rights-holders who claim that artists with accurate streaming data lose proportional shares of Spotify's royalty pool. The complaint cites data showing abnormal VPN usage and geomapping anomalies, including roughly 250,000 UK-registered streams of Drake's "No Face" traced to Turkey in 2024. Drake is not accused of wrongdoing; Spotify is the sole defendant and denies benefiting from artificial streams. The complaint estimates losses in the hundreds of millions.
Read at Pitchfork
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