Spotify sued over ‘billions’ of fake Drake streams as fraud claims rock music industry

Spotify faces a major lawsuit alleging billions of fake Drake streams that cheated artists out of royalties

Spotify is facing a massive class action lawsuit alleging the company knowingly allowed billions of fraudulent streams to inflate Drake’s numbers, causing financial harm to other artists across the platform. Filed in California District Court on Sunday by rapper RBX, a cousin of Snoop Dogg, the case accuses Spotify of turning “a blind eye” to a sprawling network of bot accounts that allegedly boosted Drake’s streams between 2022 and 2025.

According to the complaint, Spotify’s failure to address “mass-scale fraudulent streaming” enabled fake and automated plays that distorted its royalty system. Because Spotify’s streamshare model divides revenue based on total plays, bot-driven spikes in Drake’s numbers would have redirected millions from smaller, legitimate musicians. While the lawsuit names only Spotify as a defendant, Drake is cited as the prime beneficiary of the alleged manipulation.

The filing claims that “voluminous data” shows “abnormal VPN usage” masking the true origins of bot accounts. One example cited a four-day period in 2024 when more than 250,000 plays of Drake’s song No Face appeared to come from Turkey but were falsely mapped to the United Kingdom. The complaint also highlights implausible listening patterns, including accounts that streamed Drake’s music for up to 23 hours a day, and geographic clusters in regions with “zero residential addresses.”

RBX’s lawyer, Mark Pifko of Baron and Budd, told Rolling Stone that the case seeks to expose systematic fraud that “hurts songwriters, performers, and producers industry-wide.” The plaintiffs are asking for more than $5 million in damages and for Spotify to identify all affected rightsholders.

The timing of the lawsuit is notable, arriving just weeks after Drake’s own defamation case against Universal Music Group was dismissed. In that suit, the rapper alleged that UMG artificially inflated Kendrick Lamar’s hit Not Like Us through bots, though the court ruled that Drake’s claims relied on “online speculation.”

Streaming manipulation has long been an open secret in the music industry. Reports suggest that fake streams may account for as much as 10 percent of global plays, representing billions in lost royalties annually. Similar investigations are already underway in Turkey, Brazil, and Denmark, where bot-driven fraud has led to arrests.

While Spotify has yet to comment on the latest allegations, the lawsuit threatens to reignite debate over the integrity of streaming platforms and whether the world’s biggest stars have been unknowingly benefiting from artificial popularity.