Drake poses on the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas on Could 1, 2019.
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
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Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
Drake has filed a petition in opposition to Spotify and Common Music Group, accusing the businesses of conspiring to inflate the streaming and radio numbers of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” amid the rappers’ monthslong feud.
Drake says within the petition, filed within the New York court docket system, that UMG paid influencers, radio stations and others to advertise the track and use bots to extend the track’s recognition.
He references the businesses’ multi-year licensing settlement, and says they’ve “a long-standing, symbiotic enterprise relationship” by which UMG charged Spotify a licensing charge 30% lower than typical for “Not Like Us.” In change, Spotify often really useful the track to customers, he says.
Drake and Lamar are two of the most important names within the rap style, with a number of primary hits and Grammys between them. They each have document label offers below UMG and collaborated a couple of instances prior to now.
Drake claims UMG engaged in related practices with different streaming platforms, equivalent to Apple Music. For instance, when customers requested Siri to play his album Licensed Lover Boy, it performed “Not Like Us” as an alternative. He additionally says UMG fired workers “with or perceived as having loyalty to Drake.”
Spotify and UMG weren’t instantly accessible for remark.
Although, UMG stated in a press release cited by the Related Press that the “suggestion that UMG would do something to undermine any of its artists is offensive and unfaithful. We make use of the very best moral practices in our advertising and promotional campaigns. No quantity of contrived and absurd authorized arguments on this pre-action submission can masks the truth that followers select the music they need to hear.”
It’s unclear what provoked the battle between the 2, however earlier this yr they each launched a number of songs crammed with jabs and insults aimed on the different. The top of the exchanges was Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” which spent two weeks at primary on the Billboard Scorching 100 and has greater than 900,000 streams on Spotify.
Earlier than submitting a grievance, which might flip Drake’s accusations into an official lawsuit, Drake is requesting discovery that features the identities of the individuals UMG and Spotify allegedly paid to advertise and stream the track.
“Each time a track ‘breaks via,’ it means one other artist doesn’t,” he says within the petition. “UMG’s option to saturate the music market with ‘Not Like Us’ comes on the expense of its different artists, like Drake.”
