Rapper RBX has filed an amended lawsuit against Spotify over allegations the streaming platform turns a blind eye to streaming fraud when it benefits superstar artists like Drake, and especially Drake.
Judge Josephine Staton last month dismissed RBX’s original lawsuit, concluding that the rapper - real name Eric Dwayne Collins - had failed to demonstrate that Spotify owed him a duty of protection from fraudulent streams. She also questioned why Collins’ lawsuit had such a heavy focus on the allegations of streaming fraud relating to Drake’s music when Drake himself is not a defendant in the case.
But Staton also said Collins could submit an amended lawsuit, which he then did earlier this month. The new version still talks quite a lot about Drake’s alleged use of stream manipulation, though it expands more on why Collins believes Spotify’s streaming fraud policies favour the superstars to the detriment of independent artists, and why the streaming service had a duty to be more upfront about that fact.
Spotify, of course, insists that it has invested heavily in systems that aim to spot and stop the artificial boosting of streams. However, Collins claims, the streaming service is “selective” when it comes to cancelling streams that it believes have been manipulated.
In practical terms, he alleges, Spotify “intentionally ignores fraud committed by certain ‘a-list’ artists”. As a result, manipulated streams from top tier talent are still counted as legitimate plays, meaning those artists and their labels are allocated a bigger portion of the Spotify royalty pool. And because there is a finite royalty pool that the entire industry shares, that means independent artists receive less money.
“The scale of harm at issue in this litigation is enormous”, Collins’ lawsuit then claims. “Based on data analysis of streaming activity over a nearly 48 month period through 2025”, it goes on, “the streaming fraud perpetuated on Spotify’s platform is estimated to have diverted at least $600 million in royalties away” from other artists and labels.
And that “injury” is “borne by every artist on the platform, each of whom, by virtue of how Spotify pays royalties, necessarily receives a smaller share of Spotify’s revenue pool as a result”.
Spotify also has a “duty to disclose” the fact it operates a two tier streaming fraud policy, Collins’ legal filing adds. By instead “representing that it evenhandedly protects the integrity of its music royalty ecosystem” and “omitting that it selectively declines to police” the superstar fraud, the company “created a false impression that it was safeguarding all rightsholders equally”.
Spotify will presumably strongly deny the allegation that it operates a two tier streaming fraud policy that favours Drake and his superstar buddies. Though if Collins’ legal battle is allowed to proceed, it will have to defend that denial in court.
That said, presumably Spotify will also argue that the amended and expanded version of Collins’ lawsuit still has all the same issues that prompted Judge Staton to dismiss the original version, including the Drake obsession. We await to see if Spotify can get this ramped up version of the lawsuit dismissed too.