{"id":8424,"date":"2025-11-03T19:57:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T19:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/drake-fake-spotify-streams-class-action-lawsuit-filed\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T19:57:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T19:57:14","slug":"drake-fake-spotify-streams-class-action-lawsuit-filed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/drake-fake-spotify-streams-class-action-lawsuit-filed\/","title":{"rendered":"Drake Fake Spotify Streams Class Action Lawsuit Filed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tDrake\u2019s music has received \u201cbillions of fraudulent streams\u201d on Spotify, according to a new class action lawsuit that says the streaming giant turned a \u201cblind eye\u201d to bots and thus deprived fair pay to thousands of other artists.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a case filed Sunday in Los Angeles federal court, attorneys for a rapper named RBX (Eric Dwayne Collins) say Spotify is \u201call too happy\u201d to ignore billions of fake streams per month that falsely inflate some artist stats \u2013 and that Champagne Papi was one of the most-boosted artists.<\/p>\n

\n\t\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 the rapper\u2019s lawyers write. \u201cBut while the streaming fraud with respect to Drake\u2019s songs may be one example, it does not stand alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe lawsuit claims that Spotify\u2019s policies against fake streams are \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 RBX\u2019s attorneys say.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd such \u201ccheating\u201d has real victims, the lawsuit says: \u201cThis mass-scale fraudulent streaming causes massive financial harm to legitimate artists, songwriters, producers and other rightsholders whose proportional share is decreased as a result of fraudulent stream inflation on Spotify\u2019s platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard<\/em> on Monday, a Spotify spokesperson said: \u201cWe cannot comment on pending litigation. However, Spotify in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDrake was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit nor accused of any wrongdoing; a rep for the star did not return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tStreaming fraud on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music is a longstanding problem, made all the more challenging in recent years by advances in artificial intelligence and other sophisticated spoofing technologies. By some estimates, several percentage points of all streams are inauthentic \u2013 meaning billions of monthly plays. 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\tIn one extreme case, a North Carolina man named Michael Smith was indicted last year on federal charges that he used AI to create \u201chundreds of thousands\u201d of fake songs and then used thousands of bots to fraudulently stream them millions of times. The feds say the scheme diverted over $1 million per year from real artists.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his lawsuit on Sunday, RBX says he wants to force Spotify to take more aggressive action against such behavior on its platform, calling its current anti-fraud policies \u201cinadequate at best.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaintiff brings this case to bring justice for his brother and sister creators and entertainers,\u201d his lawyers write. \u201cIn doing so, Plaintiff gives a voice to more than one hundred thousand rightsholders who, among other things, may be unable or too afraid to challenge Spotify, a powerful force in the music business whose failure to act has caused significant problems and great financial harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in its response Monday, Spotify said \u201cour systems are working.\u201d It pointed out that federal prosecutors say Smith, the alleged fraudster indicted last year, earned only $60,000 of his $10 million in fraudulent royalties from Spotify \u2014 \u201cproving how effective we are at limiting the impact of artificial streaming on our platform.\u201d A full breakdown of Spotify\u2019s views on fake streams<\/a> can be found here.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn technical terms, the lawsuit accuses Spotify of legal negligence, meaning the company caused harm to him and others by failing to take steps it should have taken. He also claims the company violated California state law against unfair competition.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case is filed as a proposed class action, meaning RBX wants to represent thousands of other artists who have allegedly faced the same harm he did. But such other artists will only be drawn into the case if a judge grants approval \u2013 a difficult threshold to clear in any class action litigation.<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
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Drake\u2019s music has received \u201cbillions of fraudulent streams\u201d on Spotify, according to a new class action lawsuit that says the streaming giant turned a \u201cblind eye\u201d to bots […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[715,650,441,443,749,303,1217,6982],"class_list":["post-8424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-action","tag-class","tag-drake","tag-fake","tag-filed","tag-lawsuit","tag-spotify","tag-streams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}