Wednesday, January 15, 2025 -Drake has withdrawn his petition against Spotify and Universal Music Group after accusing the entities of launching an illegal “scheme” to boost numbers for his rival Kendrick Lamar’s hit diss track “Not Like Us.”
In
a New York filing on Tuesday, January 14, reviewed by Variety, Drake and
his Frozen Moments company withdrew its order to show cause seeking pre-action
disclosure and preservation of certain documents and communications from both
companies. The court document explains that Drake met with representatives on
Tuesday and Spotify, which had filed an opposition, had no objection to the
withdrawal and discontinuance, while UMG, which hadn’t filed an opposition,
reserved its position.
Drake
made waves in Nov. 2024 when he first accused UMG, which distributes both his
and Lamar’s music of using bots and payola to juice the numbers for “Not Like
Us,” a track that accuses Drake of paedophilia and cultural appropriation.
The
petition, which was not a full lawsuit but rather a “pre-action” move, claimed
that UMG “engaged in conduct designed to artificially inflate the popularity of
‘Not Like Us’…including by licensing the song at drastically reduced rates to
Spotify and using ‘bots’ to generate the false impression that the song was
more popular than it was in reality.”
UMG
shared a statement with Variety at the time, denouncing
Drake’s accusations. “The suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine
any of its artists is offensive and untrue,” read the statement.
“We
employ the highest ethical practices in our marketing and promotional
campaigns. No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action
submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear.”
Spotify
took their objection to court by filing opposition papers in late
December.
“Spotify
has no economic incentive for users to stream ‘Not Like Us’ over any of Drake’s
tracks,” a spokesperson said. “Only one of Spotify for Artists’ tools, Marquee,
was purchased on behalf of the song, for €500 to promote the track in France.
Marquee is a visual ad that is disclosed to users as a Sponsored
Recommendation.”
The streaming platform also asserted that UMG and
Spotify “have never had any arrangement in which UMG ‘charged Spotify licensing
rates 30 percent lower than its usual licensing rates for ‘Not Like Us’ in
exchange for Spotify affirmatively recommending [“Not Like Us”],’ including to
users who are searching for other songs and artists.”
Drake’s legal team responded to Spotify’s filing in
a statement, saying: “It is not surprising that Spotify is trying to distance
themselves from UMG’s allegedly manipulative practices to artificially inflate
streaming numbers on behalf of one of its other artists. If Spotify and UMG
have nothing to hide then they should be perfectly fine complying with this
basic discovery request.”''
All of this stemmed from a heated
back-and-forth diss tracks between Lamar and Drake that ignited after the
former dropped a verse on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That” in March
2024.
After the back-to-back diss tracks aimed at
themselves, it was Lamar’s “Not Like Us” that ended up becoming the biggest hit
out of their war of words.
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