Overview
- Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the 28-page complaint seeks class certification, damages, restitution, disclosure of affected rightsholders, and a jury trial.
- Drake is cited as the primary example of alleged inflation between 2022 and 2025 but is not named as a defendant and is not accused of criminal conduct.
- Alleged anomalies include abnormal VPN usage, a four-day burst of roughly 250,000 plays of “No Face” routed from Turkey to appear in the U.K., accounts streaming up to 23 hours a day, and a tiny share of users generating an outsized share of streams.
- The filing argues the pro rata payout system means fake activity siphoned money away from legitimate artists, estimating losses to rightsholders in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
- Spotify says it does not benefit from artificial streaming and points to detection efforts such as removing fake plays, withholding royalties, and penalties; media reports note the public complaint does not include exhibits independently verifying the data cited.