Photo Credit: David Pupăză
Is Spotify employing “undisclosed filtering practices” to boost major label artists at the expense of indies? A Norwalk-based musician (and attorney) believes so, and he’s taking aim at the alleged play-count suppression in a new suit.
Mark Kratter, who appears to release music as part of a namesake band, submitted the concise complaint to the Stamford Superior Court. Off the bat, the action reads like a recap of well-established facts concerning Spotify’s far-from-ideal royalty realities.
To the detriment of indie talent, a track must surpass 1,000 annual streams in order to generate recorded royalties, for instance. And it’s hardly a secret that editorial playlists and recommendations allegedly benefit the “major labels and high-volume catalogs” in particular.
However, the suit, alleging violations of the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act and more, doesn’t solely retread already-covered angles.
According to Kratter, the DSP in March 2026 moved forward with a publicly undisclosed overhaul of “its streaming and recommendation system that caused large categories of legitimate plays…not to be counted as streams.”
And in support of this central claim, the action cites the plaintiff’s own streaming stats. Prior to March 2026, Kratter’s “Spotify performance was stable and consistent,” with CSV data attesting to “streams proportional to listener activity,” saves “that were reflected in discovery metrics,” and more, the legal text states.
But the alleged rule changes “immediately” upended said consistency by fueling “a sharp and measurable decline in counted streams, despite continued listener activity,” per the complaint.
“Specifically, Plaintiff’s data shows: listeners exceeding counted streams; saves exceeding counted streams; playlist additions exceeding counted streams; algorithmic sessions recorded without corresponding counted streams; and discovery dropping to zero across multiple tracks,” the suit alleges.
The way Kratter tells the story, the described consumption falloff stemmed from “filtering rules that prevent certain categories of legitimate listening activity” – among them “algorithmic background listening” as well as “low-interaction sessions” and Spotify Radio plays – “from being counted as streams.”
Overall, these alleged changes caused fewer of the plaintiff’s tracks to hit 1,000 streams annually – thereby further reducing royalties and eliminating “eligibility for algorithmic promotion and royalty-bearing exposure,” according to the suit.
Finally, the alleged pivot “functioned as a redistribution mechanism” by effectively allocating “discovery and algorithmic placement…to major-label artists, whose catalogs Spotify prioritized and promoted,” the action maintains.
Kratter is seeking damages, a temporary injunction, and most notably a court “order requiring Spotify to provide a full accounting of all filtered streams, engagement signals, algorithmic sessions, and discovery allocations affecting” his catalog.
Spotify didn’t respond to a request for comment in time for publishing. But in the bigger picture, this is the latest in a line of artist cases against the platform, which yesterday beat a Drake-focused streaming fraud complaint from RBX.
Nevertheless, in dismissing without prejudice, the presiding judge didn’t explore the core allegations at hand – including that the DSP failed to stop “billions of fraudulent streams” from hitting Drake’s catalog.
