RBX Files Lawsuit Against Spotify Over Alleged Fake Streams, Citing Drake as Example
RBX, whose real name is Eric Dwayne Collins, has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Spotify accusing the streaming platform of allowing fake streams to inflate artists’ numbers. The lawsuit, filed at the California District Court on Sunday, November 2, uses Drake’s streaming figures as a key example — though the rapper himself has not been named as a defendant.
According to a report by Ratings Game Music published on October 29, Drake was the most-streamed rapper in October 2024, with 80.8 million streams, continuing his long-standing dominance on the charts. However, RBX alleges that a significant portion of Drake’s streaming numbers on Spotify are “inauthentic” and likely generated by a sprawling network of bot accounts.
The lawsuit claims that Spotify has “turned a blind eye” to billions of fake streams across various artists, causing “massive financial harm to legitimate artists, songwriters, producers, and other rightsholders.” Using Drake as an example, RBX points to suspicious patterns in the data, such as abnormal VPN usage. For instance, around 25,000 streams of Drake’s track “No Face” originated in Turkey over four days in 2024 but were falsely geo-mapped to the United Kingdom through coordinated VPN use to obscure their true origin.
Additional irregularities highlighted include geographic concentration of accounts in areas with populations too small to realistically support such high streaming volumes, slower decay rates, and unusual upticks in streams during certain months. The lawsuit states:
> “As a result, Drake’s music accumulated far higher total streams compared to other highly streamed artists, even though those artists had far more ‘users’ than Drake.”
While the lawsuit offers detailed analysis of the streaming data, it does not disclose how the plaintiffs obtained the information for their research.
Spotify Responds to Fake Streaming Allegations
A spokesperson for Spotify, speaking to Rolling Stone, denied the allegations and emphasized the company’s ongoing efforts to combat artificial streaming. The representative stated:
> “We cannot comment on pending litigation. However, Spotify in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming. 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.
> “Our systems are working: In a case from last year, one bad actor was indicted for stealing $10 million from streaming services, only $60,000 of which came from Spotify, proving how effective we are at limiting the impact of artificial streaming on our platform.”
At the time of writing, neither Drake nor his team have responded to the allegations made by RBX.
Stay tuned for more updates on this developing story.
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Also read:
– “Maths not adding up” – Netizens react as DJ Akademiks claims Kendrick Lamar lost 1B streams while Drake’s stayed the same after Spotify’s bot purge
– “Wait so I can message Drake or Beyonce?”: Netizens react as Spotify launches new in-app messaging feature
https://www.sportskeeda.com/us/music/news-is-drake-streamed-rapper-spotify-rapper-accused-faking-billions-streams-new-lawsuit-music-platform
