Spotify Sued Over 'Billions' of Fraudulent Drake Streams (consequence.net) 32
A new class-action lawsuit accuses Spotify of allowing billions of fraudulent Drake streams generated by bots between 2022 and 2025, allegedly inflating his royalties at the expense of other artists. "Spotify pays streaming royalties using a 'pro-rata' model based on an artist's market share," notes Consequence. "Each month, revenue from subscriptions and ads is collected into a single, fixed 'pot' of money, which is then distributed to rights holders based on their percentage of the platform's total streams. Because this pot is fixed, an artist who artificially inflates their numbers through bots would dilute the value of every legitimate stream. This allows them to take a larger share of the pot than they earned, effectively siphoning royalties that should have gone to other artists." From the report: According to Rolling Stone, the lawsuit alleges bot use is a widespread problem on Spotify. However, Drake is the only example named, based on "voluminous information" which the company "knows or should know" that proves a "substantial, non-trivial percentage" of his approximately 37 billion streams were "inauthentic and appeared to be the work of a sprawling network of Bot Accounts."
The complaint claims this alleged fraudulent activity took place between "January 2022 and September 2025," with an examination of "abnormal VPN usage" revealing at least 250,000 streams of Drake's song "No Face" during a four-day period in 2024 were actually from Turkey "but were falsely geomapped through the coordinated use of VPNs to the United Kingdom in [an] attempt to obscure their origins." Other notable allegations in the lawsuit are that "a large percentage" of accounts were concentrated in areas where the population could not support such a high volume of streams, including those with "zero residential addresses." The suit also points to "significant and irregular uptick months" for Drake's songs long after their release, as well as a "slower and less dramatic" downtick in streams compared to other artists.
Noting a "staggering and irregular" streaming of Drake's music by individuals, the suit also claims there are a "massive amount of accounts" listening to his songs "23 hours a day." Less than 2% of those users account for "roughly 15 percent" of his streams. "Drake's music accumulated far higher total streams compared to other highly streamed artists, even though those artists had far more 'users' than Drake," the lawsuit concludes.
The complaint claims this alleged fraudulent activity took place between "January 2022 and September 2025," with an examination of "abnormal VPN usage" revealing at least 250,000 streams of Drake's song "No Face" during a four-day period in 2024 were actually from Turkey "but were falsely geomapped through the coordinated use of VPNs to the United Kingdom in [an] attempt to obscure their origins." Other notable allegations in the lawsuit are that "a large percentage" of accounts were concentrated in areas where the population could not support such a high volume of streams, including those with "zero residential addresses." The suit also points to "significant and irregular uptick months" for Drake's songs long after their release, as well as a "slower and less dramatic" downtick in streams compared to other artists.
Noting a "staggering and irregular" streaming of Drake's music by individuals, the suit also claims there are a "massive amount of accounts" listening to his songs "23 hours a day." Less than 2% of those users account for "roughly 15 percent" of his streams. "Drake's music accumulated far higher total streams compared to other highly streamed artists, even though those artists had far more 'users' than Drake," the lawsuit concludes.
Drake (Score:1)
Hey Drake, I hear ya like 'em young
Shocking (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Informative)
I assume rightsholders demand those kind of logs as a condition of licensing their music. Because that data shows whether someone else is taking a cut out of "their" pot.
Something similar happened with Tidal years back, where people were able to obtain some kind of logs, and after combing through the data found it was falsified. Certain users were streaming certain albums 24 hours a day, and only listening to each song for about 3 seconds, among other things you can look up if you're curious. IIRC the artists promoted with Tidal's fake streams were Jay-Z (who owns Tidal), Beyonce (his wife), Kanye West, and Drake.
After the Tidal fiasco, I'm assuming the streaming platforms got smarter with the bots, making them less obviously identifiable.
It should be noted that Spotify and the distributors they work with ban artists whose songs get mixed into playlists that the bots spam. This has been used as an attack against people, by placing their songs on a botted playlist to get them banned. There is no recourse when this happens, unless you are a household name. Those guys can apparently pay up front and run as many bot streams as they'd like.
Re: Shocking (Score:2)
Re: Shocking (Score:3)
The scandal was that Tidal did not use bots. They likely used an SQL INSERT statement instead, bypassing the need for that. And the beneficiaries were the owners of the service - or rather, a few of them. They screwed over everyone else on the platform with their little stunt, including their celebrity friends.
He is going really far (Score:1)
Drake is doing everything under his power to try to come back from the hole he dug himself into with all the Ls he took on that Kendrick beef. What a spectacular loser.
Release the Epstein files.
Re:He is going really far (Score:5, Informative)
For the best of the boomers still scratching their heads, Drake lost a rap battle so badly that his response to this song was a lawsuit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I hope everyone spoofs his shit, waters it down, changes the lyrics with AI, etc. eKarma!
Re: (Score:2)
You can't water Drake down more than Drake has already done himself. Well, maybe if you got in touch with his ghost writers.
As far as the AI stuff, that's already been done, in fact the first AI-generated music I heard was "AI Drake". I thought the guy who made it was trying to do some meta-meta commentary about Drake's music, but I could be reading too much into it.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. (Score:2)
No incentive to stop fraud (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Yup.
If they had to pay per streamed song, there would be no fraud because Spotify would stop that shit instantly.
Re: No incentive to stop fraud (Score:3)
Obviously, in that scheme Spotify would have to charge per streamed song too, and that would cause monthly payments to drop straight into the toilet. Neither Spotify or the record companies are that stupid.
Spotify's incentive is to keep people subscribed, and keep the record companies on board. For a decade, they were actually the best at fighting spam/fraud by a mile. (Then they fired the guy who did most of the spam-fighting for them. Worth noting here that the record companies actually own a huge chunk o
Re: (Score:3)
Re: No incentive to stop fraud (Score:2)
Spotify didn't set it up that way, the record companies did. Now some record companies are finding out maybe it would have been better to let the money follow the user (so that your listens don't affect where anyone else's subscription fees go), but now Spotify has adapted - likely with sweetheart deals with heavily playlisted background music providers - and resists change.
Re: (Score:2)
Spotify always had fixed monthy subscription costs, so paying out a fixed/semifixed sum per stream was never an option.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: No incentive to stop fraud (Score:2)
Really? You can't?
If your scheme was implemented, there would be a fantastic incentive to find ways to listen to your own music, even worse than today. Because not only would you make a ton of money on it, but you have to be quick about it because the service would be bankrupt by next month. Terminal looting phase.
You seem to think such things are easy to detect and filter out if you set your mind to it. Meanwhile, the whole web is practically breaking down - because it isn't easy.
Re: (Score:2)
Who Is Drake? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I've heard the name, but I can honestly say I've never heard any of his music.
That's ok. You can go back to your nap now Grandpa.
What if...? (Score:2)
What if - and I know this is a simplistic idea - but what if only the streams from paying subscribers counted? I believe it would greatly discourage this type of fraud.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I wasn't talking about how much money is divided, but how the rate of every artist is counted. But my idea, as I myself admitted is a bit simplistic. I'm sure there's much more to be adjusted than simply that.
Do you really make money this way? (Score:2)
On a related note: Is Billboard going to retroactively change their "top played songs of the month" to reflect removal of the bots? It's always been a bit shady how the "Top 40" is selected, but now with obvious fraud there's no way the top songs have been accurate.
37 billion streams? (Score:3)
Logical Conculsion (Score:2)
Qui Bono?
Certainly not the bots that are downloading the music!
The only person I can think of who would benefit for more money going to Drake is Drake.
Easy way to fight fraud (Score:1)
If revenue was not pooled across subscribers you wouldn’t have any incentive for fraud in the system. If instead of taking all (royalty related) revenue, and dividing it by all streams from all artists, you divided the portion of the subscription for royalties from each subscriber across the set of songs THEY streamed, a bot playing 10 million streams in a month from their account of one artist would pay one subscriptions worth of royalties to that artist, vs a measurable percentage of all subscriber
Re: (Score:2)
divided the portion of the subscription for royalties from each subscriber across the set of songs THEY streamed .. This is 100% technically feasible, but would tend to make many mid level successful artists
That's a great idea, it's both 'fair' and wouldn't radically change the financial distribution, but make bot tampering of the distribution ineffective. On that point, I don't think it would create more mid-level successes on the assumption that the majority of listeners stream roughly the same song count whether they like Taylor Swift or Local Indie Band.
What would change is the distribution from free accounts, whose advertising revenue is well below the regular subscription fee. Songs streamed from a free
Same user, multiple listens (Score:2)