Spotify Accused Of Ignoring ‘Billions' Of Fraudulent Drake Streams—What We Know About Bot Streams

Core Viewpoint - A federal lawsuit has been filed against Spotify, accusing the streaming service of failing to prevent streaming fraud, particularly through bot-generated streams that allegedly inflated the streaming numbers of various artists, including rapper Drake, who is not named as a defendant [1][2]. Group 1: Allegations Against Spotify - The lawsuit, filed by rapper RBX (Eric Dwayne Collins), claims that Spotify has ignored "billions" of fraudulent streams, allowing bot activity to artificially inflate its user base [1][2]. - It is alleged that some of Drake's songs received "more than a hundred million streams" from locations with no residential addresses, with some streams disguised using VPNs and generated by bots that exhibited unreasonable location changes [2]. - The lawsuit argues that Spotify's inaction regarding bot activity has caused significant financial harm to legitimate artists and rightsholders, as their earnings from streams are diminished due to the inflated numbers [2]. Group 2: Spotify's Response and Industry Context - The lawsuit criticizes Spotify's public commitments to eliminate bots as being inadequate, suggesting that the company benefits from a larger user base to sell more advertisements and report higher profits [3]. - Industry experts estimate that up to 10% of music streams may be "fake," with some suggesting that various actors in the music industry, including smaller artists, have engaged in fraudulent streaming practices [4]. - Spotify has acknowledged the issue of fraudulent streams, stating that it "invests heavily in detecting, preventing, and removing the royalty impact of artificial streams," and has removed over 75 million AI-generated tracks in the past year [4].