{"id":11024,"date":"2026-06-23T12:44:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T12:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/spotify-lawsuit-over-fake-drake-streams-dismissed-by-judge\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T12:44:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T12:44:00","slug":"spotify-lawsuit-over-fake-drake-streams-dismissed-by-judge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/spotify-lawsuit-over-fake-drake-streams-dismissed-by-judge\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotify Lawsuit Over Fake Drake Streams Dismissed by Judge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tA federal judge has tossed out a class action lawsuit claiming Spotify turns a \u201cblind eye\u201d to bots and allows billions of fake streams of Drake and other stars.<\/p>\n

\n\tA rapper named RBX (Eric Collins) sued Spotify last year, accusing the music streaming giant of essentially ignoring the problem of streaming fraud by major artists, thus depriving tens of thousands of others of fair royalties. He claimed the company\u2019s anti-fraud rules were \u201cinadequate at best.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tBut in a decision Monday (June 22), Judge Josephine Staton ruled that those allegations were too \u201cvague\u201d and unsupported to move ahead in court: \u201cPlaintiff has failed 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

\n\tThough the ruling (obtained and first reported by Billboard<\/em>) dismissed RBX\u2019s case against Spotify, the judge gave him a chance to refile it with changes aimed at fixing the problems. His lawyers did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpotify has previously denied any wrongdoing, saying that it \u201cin no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming\u201d and has implemented \u201cbest-in-class systems to combat it.\u201d The company did not return a request for comment on Monday\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n

\n\tStreaming fraud on platforms like Spotify is a longstanding problem for the music business, made more challenging in recent years by artificial intelligence. By some estimates, several percentage points of all streams are inauthentic, amounting to billions of monthly plays. And since royalties on digital services are divvied up among rightsholders from a finite pie, such phony numbers siphon off revenue from legitimate streams.<\/p>\n

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\n\tSpotify has said it heavily invests in systems to detect, remove and penalize fake streams. When prosecutors indicted a North Carolina man in 2024 for stealing $10 million through an AI-powered streaming fraud scheme, they claimed only $60,000 of it came from Spotify, which the company has said shows \u201chow effective we are at limiting the impact of artificial streaming on our platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in November, lawyers for Collins claimed that Spotify\u2019s policies against fake streams were \u201cnothing more than window dressing,\u201d and that the company would prefer to do nothing because bots help the company\u2019s bottom line.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe more users (including fake users) Spotify has, the more advertisements it can sell, the more profits the company can report, all of which serves to increase the purported value delivered to shareholders,\u201d the rapper\u2019s lawyers wrote at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit took particular aim at Drake. Though the superstar was not named in the lawsuit nor formally accused of any wrongdoing, the case repeatedly mentioned him as emblematic of the broader problem. \u201cBillions of fraudulent streams have been generated with respect to songs of \u2018the most streamed artist of all time,\u2019 Aubrey Drake Graham, professionally known as Drake,\u201d RBX\u2019s lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Monday\u2019s ruling, however, Judge Staton rejected that case. RBX accused Spotify of legal negligence<\/em>, meaning the company caused him and others harm by failing to take steps it should have taken. But the judge said he had failed to show that Spotify had any duty to protect him from bots in the first place \u2014 a key requirement in any negligence lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge also rejected the lawsuit\u2019s other claim: that Spotify had violated California\u2019s Unfair Competition Law by failing to stop fake streams. And in doing so, she seemed to question RBX\u2019s heavy focus on Drake.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAlthough plaintiff alleges that Spotify should be doing more, plaintiff does not identify the degree of financial impact artificial streaming has on artists like plaintiff,\u201d Judge Staton wrote. \u201cPlaintiff\u2019s complaint focuses almost exclusively on the artificial streams of only one artist\u2019s music, so the extent to which plaintiff is injured by artificial streaming as a whole is unclear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAttorneys for RBX can refile an updated version of the case in the next 21 days.<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
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