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Drake lost his rap battle with Kendrick Lamar. Now he's going to war with Spotify.
- Drake's LLC Frozen Moments has filed a petition against Universal Music Group (UMG) and Spotify alleging that both companies have colluded to make Kendrick Lamar's viral diss track 'Not Like Us' against Drake, a bigger hit than it naturally would have been.
- The filing claims UMG offered lower licensing rates in return for promotion on the platform and used bots to inflate 'Not Like Us' streams on Spotify. Reps from UMG have called the allegations offensive and untrue.
- Drake's filing states that every time a song 'breaks through,' it means another artist does not and UMG's choice to inundate the music market with 'Not Like Us' comes at the expense of its other artists, like Drake.
- The artist and his actions have been criticized by hip-hop fans as petty and destructive to his street cred.
- The use of bots is not new - some artists employ third-party companies that enlist bot accounts to repeatedly listen to the same playlist to increase artificial streaming for higher payouts from Spotify's royalty division. But it is hard to know whether the alleged tactics have an adverse effect on star performers Drake and Lamar.
- Spotify declined to comment, but it has policies to detect and combat artificial streaming, while UMG states it employs ethical practices in marketing and promotional campaigns.
- Ultimately, the attention on the beef between the two has potentially made Spotify and UMG both winners. Lamar's 'Not Like Us' has 900m plays on Spotify, while Drake's diss track has 122m.
- If UMG and Spotify were really conspiring to help one artist over another, they would be severely disrupting the way people discover and come to love music and risking the entire streaming model the music industry now relies on.
- Smaller artists looking to make money off streaming can suffer from illegal streaming and bots, which enlist accounts made by bots to listen repeatedly to playlists to increase streams artificially and dilute different performers' pay.
- The attention and ears on the two artists' beef may have made Spotify and UMG both winners.
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