Stamford, Connecticut. Photo Credit: Quintin Soloviev
The artist-filed lawsuit targeting Spotify’s alleged “undisclosed filtering practices” is heating up: Now, the streaming platform is facing an expanded complaint and a possible temporary injunction.
Artist and attorney Mark Kratter just recently submitted a bolstered action and doubled down on his demand for an injunction as well as an expedited discovery process.
As we previously reported, Kratter in late May accused the DSP of employing “opaque rules and undisclosed filtering criteria” to boost major-label catalogs at the expense of indies. His initial suit specifically alleged a March 2026 “streaming and recommendation system” change on the platform.
The alleged pivot “altered how streams, saves, playlist additions, Radio plays, Autoplay sessions, and algorithmic sessions were counted and credited toward an artist’s performance metrics,” according to the text.
Throw in an existing 1,000-stream royalty-accrual minimum, and in practice, this all fueled a material listenership and compensation falloff, per Kratter, who cited his catalog’s own consumption metrics as proof. Spotify didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Fast forward to the present, and Kratter has fired off an amended complaint that’s longer and more example-oriented than the prior iteration.
To start, the expanded action is heavier on worthwhile background information. Besides releasing music as the Mark Kratter Band, the plaintiff also uses the “artist identities” Menachem Kratter Band, RapsterKratter, and KratterVision, according to the suit.
Between all four profiles, the filing party is said to have put out north of “1,900 recorded songs across approximately 125 or more releases spanning multiple genres including Jewish spiritual music, inspirational rap, faith-based contemporary music, and related genres.”
(Additionally, “Spotify’s own platform has confirmed, through the generation of a dedicated ‘This Is Mark Kratter Band’ editorial playlist and a Spotify Radio station for Plaintiff’s Mark Kratter Band artist identity, that Plaintiff’s catalog is algorithmically legitimate,” a relevant line reads.)
Returning to the consumption metrics, Kratter claims to have traced Spotify’s alleged rule change to between March 6th and 15th. That’s when the four artist pages “underwent a sudden, simultaneous, and systemic collapse,” per the suit and the “CSV export data from the Spotify for Artists dashboard” cited therein.
“The post-March 2026 data exhibits the following characteristics across all four identities: uniform listener counts of exactly 1 or 2 per track regardless of track age, release date, theme, or genre; stream counts mechanically capped in stair-step patterns with no organic variance; zero or near-zero saves across entire identity catalogs; absence of algorithmic distribution, catalog drift, and playlist placement; and absence of any statistical randomness that would be present in real human listening behavior,” the complaint sums up.
By the numbers, this refers, for instance, to “internally contradictory and physically impossible” figures like two saves and zero listeners on the Menachem Kratter Band’s “Hashem Lights the Arcade.”
All told, during a 28-day window, 24 of 25 sampled Menachem Kratter Band tracks “showed exactly 1 listener,” with some of the works having nevertheless picked up multiple saves, according to the suit.
“Total saves across 25 tracks in 28 days was 19, while total streams were 36 and total listeners were 11 which demonstrates a situation in which saves exceeded both streams and listeners, which is impossible under Spotify’s own data architecture,” the text states of the Menachem Kratter Band sample.
Per Kratter’s attached affidavit: “My listeners exceeded my counted streams. My saves exceeded my counted streams on multiple tracks and in the aggregate across identities. My playlist additions exceeded my counted streams. My algorithmic sessions were recorded without corresponding counted streams. Discovery dropped to effectively zero across multiple tracks across all four Artist Identities.”
And while it probably goes without saying in light of the complaint, the artist pages’ pre-March 2026 consumption trends are said to have “reflected the characteristics of real human listener behavior.”
This includes but isn’t limited to the “uneven distribution of engagement across tracks, organic variation in stream counts, sporadic but genuine saves, and multi-song engagement patterns consistent with repeat listeners discovering Plaintiff’s catalog through Spotify’s recommendation systems.”
Of course, that ties back to the alleged rule change, which Kratter “has characterized as a ‘click-based’ methodology, under which passive listening sessions, algorithmic Radio plays, Autoplay sessions, and low-interaction streaming contexts are no longer counted as streams or credited to an artist’s performance metrics.”
Still suing for an alleged violation of the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act as well as unjust enrichment, Kratter has also tacked on claims for breach of contract (referring in part to Spotify’s terms) and breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.
“Spotify’s conduct, while perhaps framed as a policy change, was undertaken in a manner that in bad faith deprived Plaintiff of the fruits of the Agreement,” the latter reads. “The covenant of good faith and fair dealing prohibits precisely this conduct.”
Finally, Kratter has from the outset been seeking a temporary injunction barring Spotify “from continuing to apply undisclosed filtering rules and the 1,000-stream threshold.”
But the push has now taken the form of a standalone motion, and as noted, the plaintiff is looking to speed up discovery “on a narrow and specific set of Spotify’s internal engineering records, algorithmic logs, and rule-change documentation.”