Another day, another lawsuit. This time, the streaming giant Spotify is in the legal spotlight, and Drake’s name is right in the mix. A new class action suit claims that billions of fake plays helped boost the rapper’s global streaming numbers while cutting into the earnings of smaller artists.
Let’s make one thing clear. Drake is not being sued here.
The complaint, filed in California federal court by rapper RBX, a cousin of Snoop Dogg, accuses Spotify of profiting from artificial streams between 2022 and 2025. According to the filing, a significant portion of Drake’s reported 37 billion streams was allegedly generated by bots and fake accounts that inflated totals across the platform.
Court documents point to what they describe as “abnormal VPN activity,” including a four-day stretch in 2024 when roughly 250,000 plays of Drake’s track “No Face” appeared to originate from Turkey but were rerouted through the United Kingdom. The lawsuit claims Spotify ignored these red flags to protect its advertising revenue and engagement metrics.
RBX argues that the company’s “streamshare” royalty model unfairly penalizes smaller artists when a major artist’s totals are artificially inflated. By allegedly tolerating the fraud, the suit claims Spotify not only padded its own metrics but also allowed superstar catalogs like Drake’s to benefit.
While Drake is not listed as a defendant and no direct wrongdoing has been attributed to him, the filing names his catalog as one of the scheme’s biggest beneficiaries. The plaintiffs are seeking more than $5 million in damages and class certification for other artists who say they were shortchanged.
This latest filing follows a separate legal battle earlier this year, when a judge threw out Drake’s defamation case against Universal Music Group over alleged manipulation of streaming data favoring Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” Drake’s legal team has since filed an appeal.
As of now, neither Spotify nor Drake’s representatives have publicly commented on the new class action.
Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, back to your regularly scheduled programming.