Spotify Faces Class Action Claiming Fraud in Drake Streams

Rapper RBX (who is Snoop Dogg’s cousin) is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against Spotify that alleges the streaming giant “turned a blind eye” to “mass-scale fraudulent streaming” on its platform.

The allegations:

• The lawsuit alleges that “billions of fraudulent streams are generated from fake, illegitimate, and/or illegal methods” on Spotify each month.

• It claims Spotify should know that a “substantial” percentage of Drake’s 37 billion streams “appeared to be the work of a sprawling network of bots.”

• As evidence it claims that “abnormal VPN usage” hid the location of bot accounts streaming Drake’s music between January 2022 and September 2025, and that “a large percentage” of accounts streaming Drake’s music were concentrated in areas with populations unable to support that “high volume of streams.”

• It also claims that less than two percent of Drake’s total listeners accounted for “roughly 15 percent” of his streams.

• The lawsuit doesn’t explain how the plaintiffs obtained this data, or how Drake’s streaming numbers were analyzed.

• There are no accusations of wrongdoing against Drake, with Spotify named the only defendant.

• The lawsuit was filed in California District Court.

The issue:

• Spotify pays royalties to artists based on their share of total streaming volume.

• The lawsuit argues that artists with accurate streaming data suffer when others have inflated figures, because it shrinks their proportionate share of the royalty pool.

• The lawsuit claims Spotify has little incentive to crack down on streaming fraud – even though it prohibits it – because higher streaming figures help sell ads.

What they said:

• A Spotify statement: “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.”

• It adds: “Our systems are working: 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.”