RBX, a West Coast rapper and former Death Row artist, filed a federal lawsuit this week claiming Spotify allowed "mass-scale fraudulent streaming" that inflated Drake's plays.
According to The Rolling Stone, the 45-page complaint asserts that Spotify's system diverted royalties from independent artists, including RBX, costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Drake doesn't appear as a defendant. As Billboard reported, RBX framed the lawsuit as a move to secure proper streaming royalties for the artists rather than going after the rapper, and Drake hasn't said anything publicly.
The suit alleges billions of fake streams occurred between January 2022 and September 2025.
Drake was able to accumulate as much as 37 billion streams from his works in the time period between January 2022 and September 2025, making him the most-streamed artist on Spotify.
RBX, however, in their complaint, argues that a significant portion of these plays were generated by bot operations, VPNs, and fake accounts, and in this way, ad revenue and charts were being artificially inflated while the amount of money given to other artists was decreasing.
The complaint cites analytics showing tens of thousands of streams rerouted through VPNs and concentrated in geographic dead zones.
It was claimed that less than 2% of the listeners were responsible for 15% of the plays of Drake, indicating the existence of bot activity.
The document states that the accusation of generating the fraudulent streams does not lie with Drake or his team are accused of benefiting from such streams.
A new lawsuit against Spotify has singled out Drake, claiming the platform allows bots to inflate numbers
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) November 5, 2025
The suit says a "substantial percentage" of the rapper's 37 billion streams were "inauthentic" pic.twitter.com/CRYh5LoKqM
Spotify Responds
Spotify issued a statement on November 3, saying, per AllHipHop, "We cannot comment on pending litigation. However, Spotify in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming." The company highlighted its fraud detection measures, including stream removal, royalty withholding, and account bans.
One of the references was also a 2024 Department of Justice case, in which a $10 million streaming fraud ring made a profit of only $60,000 from Spotify.
The report pointed out that the platform's safeguards are beyond standard practice.
The figure of 10% of streams being potentially faked is often mentioned in the music industry, which would result in a loss of several billion dollars to real artists every year. Supporters of such measures are demanding more severe inspections, improved transparency, and increased safety of royalties in the $28 billion streaming market.
This suit comes after Drake's 2024 federal case in November against Universal Music Group, in which he accused the company of using bots to promote a diss track directed at him.
The court has rejected that case in October 2025, but the case brought the issue of streaming fraud under the lens more closely.
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