A class-action lawsuit targeting Spotify, initiated by rapper RBX, has been dismissed. The suit had accused the streaming service of ignoring widespread bot-farming activity on its platform. In a ruling issued on June 22, California federal judge Josephine Stanton determined that the plaintiff failed to provide a plausible argument that the alleged damages outweighed Spotify’s justifications for its current policies regarding artificial streaming.
Judge Stanton specifically addressed two primary allegations: that Spotify was negligent in its responsibility to protect artists and that the company violated California’s Unfair Competition Law. Regarding the negligence claim, the judge noted that the legal team failed to sufficiently demonstrate that Spotify held a specific legal obligation to combat streaming fraud.
The ruling also highlighted that the complaint focused excessively on a single artist: Drake. “Plaintiff’s complaint focuses almost exclusively on the artificial streams of only one artist’s music,” Stanton noted, adding that it remained unclear how much the plaintiff was actually injured by artificial streaming across the platform as a whole.
While Drake was not a defendant in this case, he was used as a primary example of an artist allegedly benefiting from fraudulent activity. The lawsuit contended that a significant portion of Drake’s 37 billion streams were generated by a large network of bot accounts. The plaintiffs argued that because Spotify’s royalty model distributes payments based on an artist’s share of total platform volume, these inflated stream counts effectively divert hundreds of millions of dollars away from independent musicians.
Legal representatives for RBX have informed Pitchfork that they intend to file an amended complaint within the court-mandated 20-day window. Pitchfork has reached out to Spotify for comment.
In a separate legal matter, Drake filed a lawsuit against Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG) in 2024, alleging illegal stream-boosting for Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” He is also currently working to revive a different lawsuit against UMG, seeking damages for defamation related to the promotion of the track.
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