A new class-action lawsuit against Spotify is taking the fight over streaming fraud to federal court. Backed by data purporting to show that Drake, in particular, has benefitted from billions of fake streams, the lawsuit accuses Spotify of turning a blind eye to exploitation of its payout model, which allocates royalties to artists based on their share of total streaming volume. The alleged bot-driven streaming fraud “causes massive financial harm to legitimate artists” and other rights-holders, the lawsuit claims. While Drake’s streaming data is cited as evidence of widespread streaming fraud, he is not accused of wrongdoing. Only Spotify is named as a defendant. Via a spokesperson, Spotify said it “in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming.”
Filed in a California federal court on Sunday, November 2, the lawsuit lists rapper RBX as the lead plaintiff, with “other members of the general public similarly situated” given as constituents of the class action. The basis of the action is that artists with accurate streaming data suffer when others have inflated figures, because their proportional share of Spotify’s royalty pool shrinks. The lawsuit alleges that a “non-trivial percentage” of Drake’s 37 billion streams “appeared to be the work of a sprawling network of Bot Accounts.” Evidence includes data showing “abnormal VPN usage” in short timespans with high streaming volume, such as a period in 2024 when some 250,000 streams of Drake’s “No Face,” registered in the United Kingdom, were geomapped back to Turkey.
If these streams are inauthentic, the lawsuit notes, Drake received royalties that Spotify should have paid to other artists. The cost of “the fraudulent boosting of Drake’s music is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” according to the lawsuit. Although Spotify prohibits streaming fraud, the lawsuit goes on, the platform has little incentive to crack down on fake streams because bot accounts boost user figures and help them sell ads.
A Spotify spokesperson said the company could not comment on pending litigation, but added, “We heavily invest in always-improving, best-in-class systems to combat (artificial streaming) and safeguard artist payouts with strong protections like removing fake streams, withholding royalties, and charging penalties.” The spokesperson cited a 2024 house in which Spotify found that a fraudulent artist who falsely obtained $10 million in royalties from various streaming services had extracted just $60,000 from Spotify. The company attributed this to its above-average detection of artificial streaming.
اترك تعليقاً