One other day, one other lawsuit. This time, the streaming big Spotify is within the authorized highlight, and Drake’s title is true within the combine. A brand new class motion swimsuit claims that billions of faux performs helped enhance the rapper’s international streaming numbers whereas chopping into the earnings of smaller artists.
Let’s make one factor clear. Drake just isn’t being sued right here.
The criticism, filed in California federal court docket by rapper RBX, a cousin of Snoop Dogg, accuses Spotify of making the most of synthetic streams between 2022 and 2025. Based on the submitting, a good portion of Drake’s reported 37 billion streams was allegedly generated by bots and pretend accounts that inflated totals throughout the platform.
Courtroom paperwork level to what they describe as “irregular VPN exercise,” together with a four-day stretch in 2024 when roughly 250,000 performs of Drake’s observe “No Face” appeared to originate from Turkey however had been rerouted by way of the UK. The lawsuit claims Spotify ignored these pink flags to guard its promoting income and engagement metrics.
RBX argues that the corporate’s “streamshare” royalty mannequin unfairly penalizes smaller artists when a serious artist’s totals are artificially inflated. By allegedly tolerating the fraud, the swimsuit claims Spotify not solely padded its personal metrics but in addition allowed famous person catalogs like Drake’s to learn.
Whereas Drake just isn’t listed as a defendant and no direct wrongdoing has been attributed to him, the submitting names his catalog as one of many scheme’s largest beneficiaries. The plaintiffs are in search of greater than $5 million in damages and sophistication certification for different artists who say they had been shortchanged.
This newest submitting follows a separate authorized battle earlier this yr, when a decide threw out Drake’s defamation case towards Common Music Group over alleged manipulation of streaming information favoring Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” Drake’s authorized crew has since filed an enchantment.
As of now, neither Spotify nor Drake’s representatives have publicly commented on the brand new class motion.
Okay, now that we’ve received that out of the best way, again to your commonly scheduled programming.
