Drake accuses Spotify, UMG of artificially inflating streams of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” in court filing

Rapper Drake’s firm Frozen Moments filed a petition in a New York courtroom Monday accusing the streaming service Spotify and Common Music Group of conspiring to inflate the streams of Kendrick Lamar’s hit diss monitor “Not Like Us.”

“Not Like Us,” the results of Lamar and Drake’s weekslong beef, broke information on the Billboard rap charts, retaining the highest spot all summer time. Frozen Moments, described within the submitting as “an entity wholly owned by Drake,” alleges that UMG “launched a marketing campaign to govern and saturate the streaming companies and airwaves” with “Not Like Us” through bots and pay-for-play agreements.

The submitting alleges the music was licensed to Spotify at a 30% low cost in trade for a lift in suggestions to customers — the monitor now has over 900 million streams on Spotify, in accordance with the service. The petition additionally alleges UMG used bots to drive up the streams on “Not Like Us,” paid radio promoters to extend air play and even paid tech big Apple to have its voice assistant Siri misdirect customers to Lamar’s hit music.

A spokesperson for UMG referred to as the allegations “offensive and unfaithful.”

“We make use of the best moral practices in our advertising and marketing and promotional campaigns,” the spokesperson mentioned in an announcement. “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.”

When reached by CBS Information, a publicist for Drake Tuesday had no remark. Spotify, Apple and representatives for Lamar didn’t instantly reply to CBS Information requests for remark.

In response to the Related Press, Drake on Tuesday filed a second authorized motion in opposition to UMG, however in Texas, additionally over “Not Like Us.” In response to the AP, Tuesday’s submitting in Bexar County accuses UMG of partaking in “irregular and inappropriate enterprise practices” to get radio airplay for “Not Like Us,” together with making unlawful funds to San Antonio-based iHeartMedia.

When reached by CBS Information Tuesday, iHeartMedia additionally declined to remark.

UMG owns each Interscope, Lamar’s label and Republic Information, the place Drake has spent his whole profession. Drake has talked about UMG CEO Lucian Grainge in lyrics a number of instances over time, together with 2023’s “Away From House” — rapping “Who the CEO of Common? They mistaken, ‘trigger Google saying Lucian, however that simply does not make sense. Who filling up the piggy financial institution? Who bringing house the bacon?” The road appears to point Drake’s perceived significance to the label as Spotify’s second most streamed artist behind Taylor Swift, whose Massive Machine Information can be distributed by UMG.

In response to the petition, UMG terminated sure staff perceived as being loyal to Drake in the course of the inter-label feud with Lamar, and rebuffed his makes an attempt at negotiation, insisting that Drake take it up with Lamar instantly as an alternative of the label.

The petition filed Monday isn’t a lawsuit, however a pre-action movement meant to collect extra info from UMG and Spotify within the pursuit of a civil declare underneath the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, generally known as RICO.

The authorized motion comes days after Lamar launched “GNX,” his first album because the beef. Lamar references the feud a number of instances on the venture, together with Snoop Dogg’s posting of one in every of Drake’s diss tracks and Lil Wayne taking offense to Lamar’s headlining of the 2025 Tremendous Bowl Halftime present in New Orleans.

contributed to this report.