Judge Permanently Dismisses Spotify Class Action Claiming Drake Gets Billions of Fake Plays
A class-action lawsuit claiming Spotify allows billions of fake bot streams of Drake and other stars has been dismissed by a federal judge, this time permanently, Billboard reported on October 26. The case accused the streaming giant of turning a blind eye to streaming fraud by major artists, depriving tens of thousands of other artists of fair royalties.
The case was filed last year by rapper RBX (Eric Collins). It was dismissed earlier this year as too vague to move forward, though the judge gave RBX a chance to fix the problems. On Monday, October 26, Judge Josephine Staton rejected the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning the litigation is now permanently over.
"Other than conclusory statements about Spotify turning a 'blind eye' to artificial streaming of tracks from popular artists like Drake, the [lawsuit] contains no other allegations about how Spotify selectively enforces its policies against artificial streaming," Staton wrote in her ruling, first reported by Billboard. She rejected the negligence claims, ruling that Spotify owed RBX no special duty to protect him from bots, and rejected his claims under California's Unfair Competition Law, ruling that the company had made no deceptive misrepresentations about its anti-bot policies or applied them unfairly in ways that hurt him.
Although Drake was not named as a defendant, the lawsuit repeatedly mentioned him as emblematic of the broader problem, claiming billions of fraudulent streams had been generated for songs by "the most streamed artist of all time," Aubrey Drake Graham. RBX's lawyers argued in November 2025 that Spotify's anti-fraud policies were "nothing more than window dressing." Spotify has said it heavily invests in systems to detect, remove and penalize fake streams, resulting in a "best-in-class" system. Spotify declined to comment on the ruling.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: Spotify 标志，公共领域，来源 Wikimedia Commons
