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A class-action lawsuit<\/a> against Spotify led by rapper RBX, which accused the streaming giant of turning a blind eye to pervasive bot-farming on its platform, has been dismissed<\/a> as of yesterday. In her June 22 ruling, California federal judge Josephine Stanton found that RBX had \u201cfailed to plausibly allege that the harm he has suffered outweighs any justification Spotify may have for maintaining its current policies regarding artificial streaming.\u201d<\/p>\n Judge Stanton took issue with two core claims of the suit: that Spotify had been negligent in its duties towards protecting artists, and that it had violated California\u2019s Unfair Competition Law. To the first point, she countered that RBX\u2019s lawyers hadn\u2019t sufficiently proven that the company had an obligation to address streaming fraud in the first place.<\/p>\n In her decision, the judge also noted that the suit devoted a disproportionate amount of attention to one artist in particular: Drake. \u201cPlaintiff\u2019s complaint focuses almost exclusively on the artificial streams of only one artist\u2019s music,\u201d she wrote, \u201cso the extent to which plaintiff is injured by artificial streaming as a whole is unclear.\u201d<\/p>\n Drake wasn\u2019t actually named as a defendant or accused of wrongdoing; rather, he was cited as an example of an artist who has benefitted from the alleged fraud. The lawsuit claimed that a \u201cnon-trivial percentage\u201d of Drake\u2019s 37 billion total streams \u201cappeared to be the work of a sprawling network of Bot Accounts.\u201d Because Spotify\u2019s payout model allocates royalties based on one\u2019s share of the platform\u2019s total streaming volume, the suit argued, fake streams of Drake\u2019s music take money\u2014an estimated \u201chundreds of millions of dollars\u201d\u2014out of the pockets of smaller musicians by inflating his slice of the pie.<\/p>\n A representative for RBX and his legal team has confirmed to Pitchfork that they plan to file an amended complaint \u201cwithin the timeframe set by the Court\u201d\u201420 days as of writing. Pitchfork has also reached out to representatives for Spotify for further comment.<\/p>\n Drake himself filed suit<\/a> against Spotify and Universal Music Group in 2024, alleging that they engaged in illegal stream-boosting of Kendrick Lamar\u2019s \u201cNot Like Us.\u201d He\u2019s currently attempting to revive<\/a> a separate lawsuit<\/a> against UMG, seeking damages from the label for promoting the diss track on the grounds of defamation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n