Spotify has responded after West Coast Hip-Hop veteran RBX accused the platform of enabling billions of artificial Drake streams in a class-action lawsuit that claims smaller artists lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to manipulated numbers.
RBX filed the 28-page complaint in Los Angeles federal court on November 2, alleging that Spotify knowingly allowed fraudulent streaming activity to inflate the numbers of superstar artists, including Drake, while harming independent musicians.
The suit claims that “a substantial, non-trivial percentage” of Drake’s streams were fake, including more than 250,000 plays of one track traced to Turkey and rerouted through VPNs in the United Kingdom.
Spotify responded on Monday (November 3) with a statement denying any benefit from artificial streaming.
“We cannot comment on pending litigation. However, Spotify in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming,” a company spokesperson said. “We heavily invest in always-improving, best-in-class systems to combat it and safeguard artist payouts with strong protections like removing fake streams, withholding royalties, and charging penalties.”
The lawsuit does not name Drake, Universal Music Group or any third-party marketing firms as defendants. Instead, it focuses solely on Spotify’s alleged role in facilitating a system that inflates stream counts to attract advertisers and boost platform engagement.
According to the filing, some Spotify accounts streamed Drake’s music nearly “23 hours a day,” with less than 2% of listeners accounting for 15% of his total streams.
The suit claims these patterns point to bot activity, which RBX argues distorts the royalty pool and leads to unfair payouts.
Spotify defended its anti-fraud efforts by citing a 2022 case involving producer Michael Smith, who was indicted for stealing $10 million from various streaming platforms.
“Our systems are working,” the company said. “In a case from last year, one bad actor was indicted for stealing $10 million from streaming services, only $60,000 of which came from Spotify, proving how effective we are at limiting the impact of artificial streaming on our platform.”
RBX, known for his early work with Death Row Records and collaborations with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, filed the lawsuit on behalf of all artists who may have been shortchanged due to alleged streaming manipulation.
Spotify has not yet filed a formal legal response, but its statement signals a clear intent to contest the claims in court.