A judge has struck down a lawsuit that alleged Spotify was allowing “bot-farming” streams for artists such as Drake.
According to Pitchfork, on June 22, 2026, a California federal judge, the Honorable Josephine Stanton, dismissed the lawsuit brought by rapper RBX. In his filing, he accused the company of ignoring fraudulent streams. He also named Drake, specifically. RBX argued that a “non-trivial percentage” of the Toronto rapper’s 37 billion total streams “appeared to be the work of a sprawling network of Bot Accounts.”
RBX’s complaint was related to Spotify’s payout model, which is based on an artist’s share of the platform’s total streaming volume. This would mean that Drake and other artists could have garnered “hundreds of millions of dollars” in false royalties. RBX believes that it caused smaller artists to get a smaller piece of the pie, as it were. The judge, however, disagreed with RBX and his legal team.
Drake was not actually named as a defendant or accused of any wrongdoing in the lawsuit
In her ruling, Judge Stanton stated that RBX “failed to plausibly allege that the harm he has suffered outweighs any justification Spotify may have for maintaining its current policies regarding artificial streaming.”
The judge had two main issues with RBX’s lawsuit. First, she addressed the notion that Spotify was negligent in protecting artists. Also, the allegation that the company violated California’s Unfair Competition Law. Judge Stanton ruled that RBX’s lawyers had not sufficiently proven that Spotify was obligated to combat fraudulent streaming.
She also addressed the Drake claims and noted that the lawsuit disproportionately referred to him. “Plaintiff’s complaint focuses almost exclusively on the artificial streams of only one artist’s music,” the judge wrote, “so the extent to which plaintiff is injured by artificial streaming as a whole is unclear.”
Pitchfork reported that a rep for RBX said he and his legal team plan to file an amended complaint “within the timeframe set by the Court”. As of this writing, they have 20 days to do so. At this time, it appears that neither Spotify nor Drake has commented on the case.
The post Drake Named in Spotify Bot-Farming Lawsuit, but Mention of His Name Didn’t Seem to Help the Prosecution’s Case As They Expected appeared first on VICE.
