A judge has dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit alleging that streaming platform Spotify was "turning a blind eye" to 37 billion allegedly illicit Drake song streams.
An earlier version of the suit, lead by plaintiff and Long Beach rapper RBX, who’s the cousin of Snoop Dogg, was dismissed in June. An amended version was filed just over two weeks later, in mid-July.
In a 16-page legal document obtained by Complex, U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton found that RBX, real name Eric Dwayne Collins, could not back up allegations of Drake and Spotify inflating streams and deceiving platform users.
The decision, written by Judge Josephine L. Staton, went through all of RBX’s claims one by one, shutting them all down.
“Other than conclusory statements about Spotify turning a ‘blind eye’ to artificial streaming of tracks from popular artists like Drake, the [amended lawsuit] contains no other allegations about how Spotify selectively enforces its policies against artificial streaming,” Judge Staton wrote.
In the class action complaint, filed last November, Collins alleged that Spotify showed “failure to prevent streaming fraud” and shared his belief that the accounts that inflated Drake streams were listening for up to 23 hours per day.
Mark Pifko, among the lead attorneys for Collins, told Rolling Stone that an appeal will be pursued, although the same accusations cannot be refiled in federal court.
