Spotify accused of ignoring "billions" of fake Drake streams
Rapper RBX is suing Spotify after the streaming platform supposedly ignored bots and fake users boosting Drake’s streams.
The rapper has accused Spotify of streaming fraud after alleging that world-renowned rapper Drake benefited from billions of fake streams.
The lawsuit, as seen by NBC News, alleges that from January 2022 to September 2025, Drake’s songs were boosted by “billions of fraudulent streams” created by fake users and bots.
While Drake himself hasn’t been accused of any illegal activity, RBX and his lawyers have said that these fake streams have caused “hundreds of millions of dollars” in damages.
RBX, an American rapper whose government name is Eric Wayne Collins, featured on Dr. Dre’s and Snoop Dogg’s albums while being with Death Row Records.
The suit, which was filed on Sunday, the 3rd of November, with the court in the Central District of California, claims that “this mass-scale fraudulent streaming causes massive financial harm to legitimate artists, songwriters, producers, and other rights holders.”
The lawsuit claims that Spotify didn’t stop bots from inflating Drake’s streams, who is one of the most listened to artists on the platform, with over 80 million monthly listeners.
This fraudulent streaming activity is evidenced in the lawsuit through data analysis, which claims that Drake’s song “accumulated far higher total streams” than other artists with higher monthly listeners.
The data analysis supporting the lawsuit isn’t supported, and NBC News couldn’t officially verify the evidence.
The platform pays its creators via a royalties system that calculates payments based on an artist’s monthly streams.
Therefore, if an artist is purposefully boosting their streams, then they would take more money from this revenue pool.
However, Spotify has been making attempts to fight fraud on its platform. Cybernews previously reported that Spotify deleted 75 million AI-generated songs in an attempt to fight streaming fraud.
Furthermore, Spotify pulled an AI-generated song falsely attributed to late country artist Blaze Foley.
The situation raised concerns surrounding deepfake music, legacy fraud, and Spotify’s inability to flag fake content.
Unlock more exclusive Cybernews content on YouTube.
