A federal lawsuit in California, filed on Sunday, blames Spotify for overlooking widespread streaming fraud and claims that “billions” of ghost plays have artificially inflated Drake’s numbers while real artists are getting less. Rapper RBX, aka Eric Dwayne Collins, is the class action’s leading claimant, stating that the site’s poor regulation reduces royalty pools, thereby depriving authors and producers of their right to a fair reward.
The lawsuit cites evidence indicating that Drake’s songs have increased in streams by more than 100 million from locations with no residential addresses, using VPNs to hide locations and bots moving from one implausible place to another. Although there is no accusation against Drake, he is depicted as the major gainer of the plot. The filing claims that Spotify accepts fraud to increase user numbers, sell more ads, and, therefore, make more money.
Spotify, on the other hand, has claimed that it does not benefit from phantom streaming and invests a lot of money in building detection systems. Last year, the music streaming service got rid of more than 75 million AI-created songs and is going to put in place new spam filters this autumn.
For the unversed, Drake himself took legal action against Universal Music Group this year, alleging that it had hired digital bots to increase the number of times Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us” was played on Spotify. However, the platform has noted the allegation as false and speculative.
