A federal judge dismissed rapper RBX’s proposed class action against Spotify on October 23, rejecting claims that the platform allowed allegedly fraudulent Drake streams to divert royalties from other artists. According to Rolling Stone’s reporting on the ruling, U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton found that RBX, whose legal name is Eric Dwayne Collins, had not adequately established a legal duty supporting his negligence claim or sufficient facts supporting his other allegations. Drake was not a defendant in this lawsuit.
Collins argued that artificial streams distort Spotify’s streamshare system by increasing one catalog’s share of the revenue pool at other artists’ expense. The court had previously allowed him to amend his complaint but dismissed the revised claims without another opportunity to amend. The outcome illustrates the difficulty of translating concerns about streaming manipulation into legally sufficient claims against a platform. It does not establish that every disputed stream was authentic, and the allegations should not be presented as proven fraud or evidence that AI-generated music was involved.
Join the discussion