\n<\/p>\n
A new class-action lawsuit against Spotify is taking the fight over streaming fraud to federal court. Backed by data purporting to show that Drake<\/a>, in particular, has benefitted from billions of fake streams, the lawsuit accuses Spotify of turning a blind eye to exploitation of its payout model, which allocates royalties to artists based on their share of total streaming volume. The alleged bot-driven streaming fraud \u201ccauses massive financial harm to legitimate artists\u201d and other rights-holders, the lawsuit claims. While Drake\u2019s streaming data is cited as evidence of widespread streaming fraud, he is not accused of wrongdoing. Only Spotify is named as a defendant. Via a spokesperson, Spotify said it \u201cin no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming.\u201d<\/p>\n Filed in a California federal court on Sunday, November 2, the lawsuit lists rapper RBX as the lead plaintiff, with \u201cother members of the general public similarly situated\u201d given as constituents of the class action. The basis of the action is that artists with accurate streaming data suffer when others have inflated figures, because their proportional share of Spotify\u2019s royalty pool shrinks. The lawsuit alleges that a \u201cnon-trivial percentage\u201d of Drake\u2019s 37 billion streams \u201cappeared to be the work of a sprawling network of Bot Accounts.\u201d Evidence includes data showing \u201cabnormal VPN usage\u201d in short timespans with high streaming volume, such as a period in 2024 when some 250,000 streams of Drake\u2019s \u201cNo Face,\u201d registered in the United Kingdom, were geomapped back to Turkey.<\/p>\n If these streams are inauthentic, the lawsuit notes, Drake received royalties that Spotify should have paid to other artists. The cost of \u201cthe fraudulent boosting of Drake\u2019s music is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars,\u201d according to the lawsuit. Though Spotify prohibits<\/a> streaming fraud, the lawsuit goes on, the platform has little incentive to crack down on fake streams because bot accounts boost user figures and help them sell ads.<\/p>\n A Spotify spokesperson said the company could not comment on pending litigation, but added, \u201cWe heavily invest in always-improving, best-in-class systems to combat [artificial streaming] and safeguard artist payouts with strong protections like removing fake streams, withholding royalties, and charging penalties.\u201d The spokesperson cited a 2024 case<\/a> in which Spotify found that a fraudulent artist who falsely obtained $10 million in royalties from various streaming services had extracted just $60,000 from Spotify. The company attributed this to its above-average detection of artificial streaming.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n