A class-action lawsuit has accused Spotify of enabling billions of fraudulent streams of Drake’s music generated by bots between 2022 and 2025. According to the complaint, these streams, which allegedly inflated Drake’s royalties at the expense of other artists, were part of a coordinated effort to siphon revenue from Spotify’s fixed revenue pool. The lawsuit highlights the pro-rata royalty model used by Spotify, which distributes revenue based on an artist’s market share of streams.
The complaint details how bot accounts artificially inflated the number of streams for Drake’s music, including the coordinated use of virtual private networks (VPNs) to obscure the true origins of these streams. According to the lawsuit, at least 250,000 streams of Drake’s song ‘No Face’ during a four-day period in 2024 were actually generated from Turkey but were falsely geomapped to the United Kingdom.
Other allegations include the concentration of accounts in areas with populations unable to support such a high volume of streams, as well as irregular upticks in streams for Drake’s songs long after their release. Additionally, the suit argues that a small percentage of users account for a significant portion of Drake’s streams, suggesting potential exploitation of Spotify’s royalty model. If proven, these allegations could lead to significant financial consequences for Spotify and potentially impact the company’s business practices.