Drake Named In Class Action Over Fraudulent Spotify Streams
Drake’s legal drama continues because the rap star is known as in one other high-profile lawsuit — this time involving Spotify. music/music-features/lawsuit-spotify-drake-streams-1235457737/”>Rolling Stone’s Nancy Dillion and Jon Blistein broke the information on Monday morning (Nov. 3).
Drake is on the heart of latest authorized scrutiny after a category motion lawsuit accused Spotify of making the most of billions of pretend streams that allegedly inflated his international streaming numbers. The grievance, filed Sunday in California federal courtroom by rapper RBX — a cousin of Snoop Dogg — claims Spotify “turned a blind eye” to large-scale streaming fraud that benefited high-profile artists whereas disadvantaging unbiased musicians.
The lawsuit alleges that between 2022 and 2025, a “substantial percentage” of Drake’s roughly 37 billion streams have been generated by bots and faux accounts. The submitting cites what it calls “abnormal VPN activity” obscuring the true origin of the streams, together with a four-day interval in 2024 when 250,000 performs of Drake’s monitor “No Face” appeared to return from Turkey however have been rerouted by the United Kingdom. The swimsuit asserts that Spotify both knew or ought to have identified of this fraudulent exercise and did not act.
RBX contends that the alleged manipulation inflated Drake’s streaming royalties on the expense of different artists. Spotify’s “streamshare” mannequin swimming pools promoting and subscription income earlier than dividing royalties primarily based on complete streams per artist.
Drake Named In Class Action Lawsuit Against Spotify
Artificially excessive play counts for one artist, the lawsuit argues, cut back funds to others. The grievance additionally claims Spotify tolerated the inflated figures to extend its personal promoting income and consumer metrics.
Drake isn’t named as a defendant, and there aren’t any direct allegations of misconduct in opposition to him. However, the submitting accuses Spotify of permitting his catalogue to be a serious beneficiary of the scheme. The plaintiffs search over $5 million in damages and sophistication certification for artists allegedly harmed by the fraud.
The lawsuit comes simply months after a decide dismissed Drake’s defamation case in opposition to Universal music Group, wherein he accused the label of manipulating streaming information to spice up Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”
Spotify and representatives for Drake haven’t publicly responded to the claims.
The RBX swimsuit marks some of the high-profile authorized challenges to streaming fraud within the United States and will set precedent for the way platforms monitor synthetic play counts — and the way artists’ royalty earnings are audited within the digital period.
Categories News