Videos by According2HipHop
Spotify scored a major court victory on Monday (June 22). After a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit alleging that Drake benefited from bot streams on their streaming platform.
Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Accusing Spotify of Fake Drake Streams
To bring things up to speed, in November, California-born rap artist RBX filed a class action lawsuit against Spotify. In the filing, RBX alleges that the music giant turned a blind eye to bots that boosted the streams of the songs performed by Drizzy. Noting that the Grammy-winner benefited from “billions of fraudulent streams.”
According to a June 22 report from Billboard, Judge Josephine Staton ruled in favor of the rap star. She stated that the allegations made by RBX were too “vague” to justify his claims.
“Plaintiff has failed to plausibly allege that the harm he has suffered outweighs any justification Spotify may have for maintaining its current policies regarding artificial streaming,” Judge Staton said in her decision.
She also ruled against RBX’s claim that the streaming service violated California’s Unfair Competition Law. By not doing anything to stop the alleged bot streams. She reasoned that the complaint did not “identify the degree of financial impact artificial streaming has on artists.”
“Although plaintiff alleges that Spotify should be doing more, plaintiff does not identify the degree of financial impact artificial streaming has on artists like plaintiff,” Judge Staton added. “Plaintiff’s complaint focuses almost exclusively on the artificial streams of only one artist’s music. So the extent to which plaintiff is injured by artificial streaming as a whole is unclear.”
At the time of writing, RBX has not spoken out about the decision or any plans to appeal it.
