Spotify Hit with Two Class-Action Lawsuits Accusing Payola & Fraud

Two separate lawsuits were filed against Spotify in the past four days accusing it of accepting payola (money for plays), and ignoring billions of fraudulent bot streams.

All Hip Hop magazine broke the story of the latest class-action lawsuit against Spotify, filed Tuesday in a Manhattan federal court. The suit accuses Spotify of secretly taking money from record labels to promote their musicians.

Rolling Stone magazine reported, "The 39-page complaint, filed by Spotify subscriber Genevieve Capolongo and other users, argues that Spotify 'charges listeners for the privilege of being deceived,' with Discovery Mode creating a 'false impression of neutral, personalized recommendations when financial incentives are quietly driving the algorithm.'"

"'Spotify exploits that trust by marketing itself as a platform that offers organic music recommendations … only to secretly sell those recommendations to the highest bidder,' the lawsuit states, adding that Capolongo’s Discovery Mode playlist was stuffed with hits by Justin Bieber and Drake, whose streams on the service are the focus of a separate lawsuit."

In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Spotify called the allegations “nonsense.”

In the first lawsuit, filed two days prior, Spotify is accused of failing to prevent streaming fraud by allowing billions of bot streams to increase rapper Drake's numbers, according to Forbes magazine. Drake is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit filed Sunday in California.

Forbes reported that Rapper RBX (Eric Dwayne Collins), "filed a class action lawsuit against Spotify alleging the streaming service 'turns a blind eye to fraudulent streaming,' including bot activity, to artificially inflate the streaming platform’s user base."

RBX is Snoop Dogg's cousin.

Spotify (Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images) via Forbes