Charlamagne Tha God Predicts Feds Will Step In After Spotify Bot Case

Spotify is facing a major challenge as the company contends with a massive class-action lawsuit. Filed Sunday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the case accuses the streaming service of allowing several artists—most notably Drake—to profit from fake streams.

According to the complaint, “Every month, under Spotify’s watchful eye, billions of fraudulent streams are generated from fake, illegitimate, and/or illegal methods.” The lawsuit is being led by RBX, a California rapper and cousin of Snoop Dogg. It further claims that such actions have caused “massive financial harm to legitimate artists, songwriters, producers, and other rightsholders.”

The filing also explains how Spotify distributes royalties using a “streamshare” model. This system pools all streams together before calculating an artist’s percentage share.

Plaintiffs argue that this setup unfairly disadvantages smaller artists, pointing to deeper flaws in the platform’s payment structure. Spotify responded to the allegations with an official statement: “We cannot comment on pending litigation. However, Spotify in no way benefits from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming. We heavily invest in always-improving, best-in-class systems to combat it and safeguard artist payouts with strong protections like removing fake streams, withholding royalties, and charging penalties.”

While bots and fake streaming activity aren’t new to the industry, Charlamagne Tha God believes this particular case could lead to a sweeping federal investigation. During a segment on The Breakfast Club, co-host Loren LoRosa broke down the lawsuit’s key points, noting that much of the fake traffic linked to Drake’s catalog appeared to be coming from Turkey.

LoRosa mentioned that around 250,000 artificial plays were tied to the song “No Face.” Charlamagne speculated that this might be related to Spotify’s earlier issues in Turkey from earlier this year.

For context, Turkey’s competition authority launched a probe back in July to determine whether Spotify violated national laws. As reported by Music Business Worldwide, officials sought to learn whether the company was “engaging in practices that complicate the operations of its rivals in the online music streaming services market and/or affect the distribution of the royalties paid to various parties within the framework of its licensing relationships.”

Charlamagne predicted that this growing controversy could become “the next federal freak-off.” He also suggested that many artists might be secretly paying bot farms to inflate their streaming numbers.