Overview
- Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the complaint alleges that from January 2022 through September 2025 billions of inauthentic plays boosted Drake’s totals and deprived others of hundreds of millions of dollars.
- Cited indicators of manipulation include abnormal VPN activity, accounts streaming Drake nearly 23 hours a day, plays from locations with no residential addresses, and roughly 250,000 2024 streams of “No Face” traced to Turkey but registered in the U.K.
- Drake is identified as a beneficiary of allegedly inflated streams but is not accused of wrongdoing and is not a defendant.
- Spotify denies benefiting from artificial streaming and says it invests in systems that remove fake streams, withhold royalties, and levy penalties, noting a prior case where only $60,000 of a $10 million scam reached its platform.
- The filing includes no supporting exhibits or disclosed data source, and the allegations remain unverified as the case enters early stages pending motions, discovery, and potential class certification.