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Michael Tullberg / Contributor via Getty Images and Mark Blinch / Contributor via Getty Images
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RBX arrives at the release party for Snoop Dogg’s new album, “Tha Blue Carpet Treatment”, held at the Area nightclub on November 20, 2006 and Drake watches on as the Sacramento Kings play the Toronto Raptors during the second half of their basketball game at the Scotiabank Arena
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Key Takeaways:
- A new lawsuit claims Spotify ignored bot-generated streams that inflated Drake’s numbers.
- The suit, filed by rapper RBX, alleges billions of fake plays harmed other artists financially.
- Spotify denies wrongdoing and says it actively removes fake streams and penalizes bad actors.
Spotify is facing a new lawsuit alleging it ignored “billions of fraudulent streams” of Drake’s music. Filed on Sunday (Nov. 2) by Snoop Dogg’s cousin and rapper RBX (né Eric Dwayne Collins), the filing claims the streaming giant knowingly turned a “blind eye” to bots.
According to the legal documents, obtained by NBC News, the “mass scale” fraud inflicted “massive financial harm to legitimate artists, songwriters, producers, and other rightsholders.” Collins’ attorneys wrote, “Billions of fraudulent streams have been generated with respect to songs of ‘the most-streamed artist of all time,’ Aubrey Drake Graham, professionally known as Drake.”
They continued, “But while the streaming fraud with respect to Drake’s songs may be one example, it does not stand alone.” Interestingly, though, he’s the only example specifically mentioned throughout the filing.
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Campbell Dunn / Stringer via Getty Images
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Drake poses for a photo in the suite during Game One of the 2025 World Series presented by Capital One between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on Friday, October 24, 2025 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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“We cannot comment on pending litigation. However, Spotify in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming,” a spokesperson for the streaming service said in a statement. “We heavily invest in always-improving, best-in-class systems to combat it and safeguard artist payouts with strong protections like removing fake streams, withholding royalties, and charging penalties.”
The company referenced “one bad actor” indicted for stealing $10 million from streaming services, presumably producer Michael Smith, noting that only $60,000 of that amount was tied to Spotify. The lawsuit also alleged that Drake had “accumulated far higher total streams” than other artists with “far more users,” though it didn’t include any data or appendix to support the claim.
Per the complaint, the supposed “fraudulent streaming” occurred between January 2022 and as recently as September 2025. As Rolling Stone noted, the suit is seeking over $5 million and requests that a federal judge “certify the lawsuit as a class action, order Spotify to identify alleged victims, and oversee a jury trial seeking compensatory and punitive damages.”
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Michael M. Santiago / Staff via Getty Images
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In this photo illustration, the Spotify music app is seen on a phone on June 04, 2024 in New York City. Spotify made an announcement that it will be raising the price of its Spotify Premium Individual plan
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It’s worth pointing out that while Drake is repeatedly mentioned, and certainly a focal point, in the lawsuit, he isn’t named as a defendant. Ironically, the Canadian superstar himself sued Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” earlier this year, though a judge ultimately dismissed the case.
In a legal petition filed before then, he alleged that Spotify boosted the diss track’s streams and licensed it at “drastically reduced rates.”
