Spotify is now facing a big class-action lawsuit that’s all about fake streams, and it’s making a lot of people worried.
This case, just filed at a California court on a very uneventful Sunday, puts RBX at the front of the class with loads of other artists possibly joining in. The lawsuit claims Spotify doesn’t do enough to stop people from using bots to cheat the streaming system. What’s even wilder: Drake’s streaming numbers are central to the complaint, with data hinting that a chunk of his 37 billion streams could be, well, not real at all. There are reports of tons of streams for tracks like “No Face” showing up in the UK but tracing back to Turkey, which seems super suspicious. The only defendant here is Spotify, and not Drake, but his numbers are definitely adding fuel to this fire.
When it comes to who loses out, the lawsuit says: real artists with honest fans get less money since they have to share Spotify’s payout pool with tracks juiced up by bots. All that fake streaming, especially with superstar songs, means “hundreds of millions of dollars” might have been moved away from regular artists into the wrong pockets. And let’s be real, it stings to watch shady practices push down the rewards for legit streaming while bots just click, click, click.
Fans really hope the people in charge fix the mess soon.
Even though Spotify says loud and clear it “in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming,” the lawsuit disagrees. It argues that more “users” and listeners—even if they’re bots—can make Spotify look more popular and pull in more advertisers. Spotify responded, “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.” They also pointed out a story where a scammer got $10 million from many streaming sites but only managed to snatch $60,000 from Spotify, thanks to their tough anti-bot systems.
Sometimes, I think about how people invent sneaky tech just to play music on loop for cash.
