Canadian superstar Drake has withdrawn his highly-publicised petition against Universal Music Group and Spotify which accused both of conspiring to artificially increase streams on Kendrick Lamar’s hit diss track “Not Like Us”.
The dispute was made public in November 2024 when Drake launched a “pre-action” move against publishing group UMG – to which Drake and Lamar are both signed – alleging that the music giant used payola and streaming bots in an illegal “scheme” to make “Not Like Us” appear “more popular than it was in reality.”
Today (January 15), legal documents obtained by Variety reveal that the petition was discontinued “without costs to any party”.
Both UMG and Spotify unreservedly rejected the claims by Drake’s Frozen Moments LLC when they were first launched. “The suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue,” announced UMG in a statement back in November. Meanwhile, a Spotify spokesperson said: “Spotify has no economic incentive for users to stream ‘Not Like Us’ over any of Drake’s tracks.”
The astronomical success of Lamar’s “Not Like Us”, and subsequent album GNX, led the Compton rapper to overtake Drake in streaming charts last year, as well as breaking the record for most single-day streams of a hip-hop track on Spotify – a record that was previously held by Drake and Lil Baby’s “Girls Want Girls”. Both rappers, however, still sit in Spotify’s top 20 streamed artists globally.
A second legal filing, which accused Lamar of defamation for “falsely” accusing the rapper of paedophilia and cultural appropriation in the record-breaking diss track, was not mentioned in yesterday’s (January 14) documents.
