The case that accused Spotify of letting bots inflate Drake’s stream counts has been thrown out — but the door isn’t fully closed yet. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit filed by RBX, the former Death Row Records artist, though he’s been given 21 days to refile if he wants to keep pushing.
RBX’s legal team had gone hard with the allegations, claiming that “billions of fraudulent streams have been generated” in connection with Drake, whose lawyers referred to him in the filing as “the most streamed artist of all time.” The core argument was that these botted streams weren’t just boosting Drake — they were actively suppressing smaller artists in Spotify’s algorithm, essentially rigging the playing field.
What makes the timing interesting is that this isn’t even the only bot-related lawsuit against Spotify to get tossed recently. Just last month, a separate case — one that accused Spotify of outright “fabricating” Drake’s streaming success — was also dismissed, and that one had nothing to do with RBX’s filing. Two similar lawsuits, two dismissals, within weeks of each other.
The bot conversation around Drake has been loud for a while now, especially after his back-and-forth with Kendrick Lamar turned streaming numbers into a whole debate. Both camps had fingers pointed at them during that period, with fans and observers on both sides questioning whether the Spotify stats anyone was citing actually meant anything. It got messy fast, and it never fully got resolved.
Spotify has been making moves to clean things up on their end, pulling botted streams from counts on the platform. But whether that’s enough to actually stamp out the practice — or whether it just pushes it further underground — is a question nobody’s really answered yet.
RBX now has to decide whether to rework the case and come back, or walk away entirely. Given that a separate, unrelated lawsuit making similar claims also just got dismissed, the legal path forward looks complicated.
