EXCLUSIVE: RBX Hits Spotify With Fresh Bot Claims; Claims Fraud Rules Bend For Drake

RBX comes back swinging at Spotify, saying the platform lets Drake’s streams slide while cracking down on everyone else.

RBX hit Spotify with a sharper class action this month, accusing the platform of policing streaming fraud unevenly.

His original suit got tossed back in June, but the judge said he leaned too hard on one artist to prove real harm. His lawyers came back with receipts this time, and Drake’s catalog is still center stage.

The amended complaint claims Spotify slaps small artists with minimum stream thresholds and per-track penalties for fake plays. It says Spotify used those same red flags to countersue an independent artist in a separate case years ago.

Yet the suit claims Spotify never applied that scrutiny to Drake, even though his streaming patterns showed similar signs of bot activity.

One example the suit points to involves Malcolm Todd’s song “Earrings.” Spotify only pulled hundreds of thousands of fake streams from that track after a trader publicly called out the numbers

The suit uses that moment as proof Spotify can catch fraud fast when it wants to.

The complaint adds a new wrinkle, using Drake’s ticket sales as evidence that something doesn’t add up.

His tours average 11,500 to 16,700 tickets a show, but comparable hip-hop artists with lower streamshare sell 35,000 to 100,000 seats a night. RBX’s team argues that the gap shows real-world fans don’t align with Spotify’s claims about his popularity.

The new filing also puts a hard number on the damage, estimating $600 million in diverted royalties over four years. It leans on a fresh legal argument too, claiming

Spotify controls the bot accounts directly, as it issues them and can shut them down at any time.

Drake still isn’t a defendant here, and nobody accuses him of running the bot scheme himself. Judge Josephine Staton tossed the original complaint in June, ruling RBX leaned too hard on one artist to show his own losses, according to Billboard.

AllHipHop tracked that dismissal closely, and this amended version is RBX’s answer to that ruling.

RBX, whose given name is Eric Dwayne Collins, co-wrote Dr. Dre’s “Let Me Ride” and appeared on The Chronic decades before this lawsuit.

The amended complaint also asks the court to compel Spotify to add CAPTCHAs and phone verification at sign-up to make bot accounts harder to create.

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