A subscriber has sued Spotify over its Discovery Mode “personalised” playlist policy, accusing it of “modern payola”.
As reported by Music Business Worldwide, a class-action lawsuit was filed in Manhattan on Tuesday (November 4) by Spotify user Genevieve Capolongo, claiming that the streamer allegedly allows songs to be boosted in personalised recommendations in return for lower royalties.
The suit likens the policy to payola, the practice that was widespread in the music industry in the 1950s and 1960s in which secret payments were made to radio stations and DJs to get songs played and mislead the audience as to which tracks were genuinely popular.
The complaint reads: “Spotify’s ‘Discovery Mode’ and purportedly organic curated playlists represent the latest form of payola in the industry’s long history of deceptive pay-for-play.”
There’s a new lawsuit against Spotify alleging pay-to-play promotion with their Discovery Mode tool. We need transparency from streaming services and an end to payola – we need the Living Wage for Musicians Act! pic.twitter.com/oysqW1nrVp
— United Musicians and Allied Workers (@UMAW_) November 6, 2025
It claims that the streamer “exploits” subscribers “by marketing itself as a platform that offers organic music recommendations – whether through its algorithmic or curated playlists.” The complaint alleges that Spotify effectively “sells” recommendations, with priority given to tracks whose rights-holders accept reduced royalties.
The suit, which you can read in full here, is seeking class-action status for 100 members, seeking more than $5million exclusive of costs and interest. It also seeks an injunction requiring Spotify to disclose when commercial arrangements affect recommendations.
Spotify has strongly refuted the allegations, telling AllHipHop: “The allegations in this complaint are nonsense. Not only do they misrepresent what Discovery Mode is and how it works, but they are riddled with misunderstandings and inaccuracies.”
“The complaint even gets basic facts wrong,” they added. “Discovery Mode isn’t used in all algorithmic playlists, or even Discover Weekly or DJ, as it claims.”
They continued: “It’s also wrong to suggest Discovery Mode only supports major label artists. In fact, it’s been widely embraced by the independent music community, many of whom have praised the program publicly.”
Discovery Mode was launched in 2020 and allows artists and labels to flag priority tracks for algorithmically-generated playlists, for certain algorithmic contexts such as Radio, Autoplay, and Mixes.
In other news, a separate lawsuit has been filed this week alleging that the number of streams Drake has on Spotify has been artificially inflated. The streamer is accused of having “mass-scale fraudulent streaming” that it “turned a blind eye” to, but they have responded by saying they “in no way benefit from the industry-wide challenge of artificial streaming”.
