Spotify hit with lawsuit over billions of alleged fake streams
What's the story
Spotify has been slapped with a class-action lawsuit in the California District Court. The suit, filed on Sunday night, accuses the music streaming giant of ignoring widespread fraudulent streaming activity on its platform. The lead plaintiff is Long Beach rapper RBX, who is suing "on behalf of other members of the general public similarly situated."
Legal claims
RBX accuses Spotify of ignoring fraudulent streaming activity
The lawsuit alleges that Spotify has ignored or failed to adequately address the generation of billions of fraudulent streams every month. These, it says, are produced through fake, illegitimate, and/or illegal methods such as bots. The complaint further argues that this mass-scale fraudulent streaming inflicts huge financial damage on legitimate artists, songwriters, producers and other rightsholders whose proportional share is diminished due to this fraudulent stream inflation on Spotify's platform.
Revenue distribution
Bot inflation impacts Spotify's pro-rata payout model
Spotify pays streaming royalties based on a "pro-rata" model, which is at the center of this lawsuit. The company pools revenue from subscriptions and ads into a fixed "pot" of money each month. This pot is then distributed to rights holders according to their market share on the platform. However, if an artist inflates their numbers through bots, they could take a larger share than they deserve, effectively siphoning royalties meant for other artists.
Specific allegations
Drake is the only artist named in the lawsuit
The lawsuit alleges that bot use is rampant on Spotify, with Drake being the only example cited. The complaint claims "voluminous information" that the company "knows or should know" proves a "substantial, non-trivial percentage" of his nearly 37 billion streams were "inauthentic and appeared to be the work of a sprawling network of Bot Accounts." This alleged fraudulent activity occurred between January 2022 and September 2025.
Streaming anomalies
Lawsuit lists examples of alleged bot usage for 'No face'
The lawsuit highlights "abnormal VPN usage" as evidence of fraudulent streaming. It says at least 250,000 streams of Drake's song No Face over a four-day period in 2024 were from Turkey but falsely geomapped to the UK through coordinated use of VPNs. Other allegations include a high concentration of accounts in areas where the population couldn't support such high volumes of streams and significant uptick months for Drake's songs long after their release.
Company statement
What did Spotify say in response?
Responding to the lawsuit, a Spotify representative said, "We cannot comment on pending litigation. However, Spotify in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming." The company also highlighted its efforts to combat this issue and protect artist payouts. The lawsuit seeks damages over $5 million, claiming rights holders were defrauded of "hundreds of millions of dollars." It asks for class action certification, disclosure of other potential victims by Spotify, and a jury trial for damages.