Warning: Trying to follow Drake’s legal maneuvers could give you whiplash.
Last week, the rapper withdrew a legal petition against Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG, parent company of Republic, the label to which Drake is signed), in which he alleged a payola scheme and the use of bots to artificially inflate the popularity of Kendrick Lamar’s diss track Not Like Us.
Almost immediately after dropping that legal action, Drake turned around and filed a full-blown defamation lawsuit against UMG.
For its part, UMG has made it clear it sees the lawsuit as unfounded and intends to defend itself vigorously.
“Not only are these claims untrue, but the notion that we would seek to harm the reputation of any artist — let alone Drake — is illogical,” a UMG spokesperson told MBW last week.
UMG’s spokesperson added: “We have invested massively in his music and our employees around the world have worked tirelessly for many years to help him achieve historic commercial and personal financial success.
“Throughout his career, Drake has intentionally and successfully used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to engage in conventionally outrageous back-and-forth ‘rap battles’ to express his feelings about other artists.
“He now seeks to weaponize the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression and to seek damages from UMG for distributing that artist’s music.
“We have not and do not engage in defamation — against any individual. At the same time, we will vigorously defend this litigation to protect our people and our reputation, as well as any artist who might directly or indirectly become a frivolous litigation target for having done nothing more than write a song.”
Drake argues that UMG is responsible for the allegedly defamatory nature of Not Like Us.
The lawsuit doesn’t name Lamar as a defendant, only UMG, and stresses that “this lawsuit is not about the artist who created Not Like Us. It is, instead, entirely about UMG, the music company that decided to publish, promote, exploit and monetize allegations that it understood were not only false, but dangerous.”
Drake’s legal complaint, which can be read in full here, begins with an account of an incident that took place at Drake’s palatial home in Toronto’s ritzy Bridle Path neighborhood on May 7, 2024, three days after the release of Not Like Us. In an incident widely covered by the media at the time, shots were fired at Drake’s home, injuring a security guard.
The lawsuit goes on to document several more attempts by members of the public to enter Drake’s home.
“In the two decades leading up to May of 2024, although Drake was constantly in the public eye, nothing remotely like these events had ever happened to him or his family. But these events were not coincidental,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit ties the incidents to the release of Not Like Us, and argues that UMG should be held solely responsible because UMG “approved, published, and launched a campaign to create a viral hit out of a rap track that falsely accuses Drake of being a pedophile and calls for violent retribution against him. Even though UMG enriched itself and its shareholders by exploiting Drake’s music for years, and knew that the salacious allegations against Drake were false, UMG chose corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.”
Not Like Us was one of 2024’s biggest hits, racking up some 1 billion streams since its release in May of last year, and setting a new record for most streams of a rap song in the US in a single day – 13 million in the 24 hours after the track’s release.
Drake’s complaint attempts to do something that could prove difficult in a US court: To treat song lyrics as a form of defamation. US courts have in the past rejected that argument, citing artistic expression as a form of protected speech.
Seemingly aware of this, the complaint seeks to show legal precedent for treating lyrical content seriously in courts, most notably referring to the Georgia trial of Young Thug on RICO charges, in which the prosecution reportedly used the rapper’s lyrics as evidence.
“This lawsuit is… entirely about UMG, the music company that decided to publish, promote, exploit and monetize allegations that it understood were not only false, but dangerous.”
Drake’s legal complaint against Universal Music Group
It also aims to show that the public didn’t treat Lamar’s lyrics as “art,” but rather as a statement of fact, documenting dozens of social media posts in which users asserted that Not Like Us was evidence that Drake had engaged in criminal activity.
Drake’s complaint contains much more than allegations of defamation. Here are five things we learned from Drake’s complaint against UMG.
1. Drake’s contract with UMG is up for renegotiation in 2025, and Drake believes ‘Not Like Us’ is UMG’s way of gaining leverage
Drake’s complaint against UMG revealed that the rapper’s contract with UMG, originally signed in 2009, is up for renegotiation this year.
UMG’s Republic releases Drake’s records, and his music is published by Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG).
The complaint offers a – let’s call it – theory for why UMG may have been motivated to damage Drake’s reputation and career.
“By the spring of 2024, UMG understood that the rise of streaming platforms had ‘enhanced the bargaining power of artists. Established artists whose contracts are coming up for renewal are in an improved position to demand higher take rates due to the improvement in the visibility of cash flows and risk reduction,’” the complaint stated, quoting an article from the MoneyFlow Research blog.
Thus, “UMG was incentivized to act, and in fact did act, in a manner to reduce that bargaining leverage in advance of upcoming negotiations with Drake over contract renewal,” the complaint alleged.
2. Drake claims that UMG may have been trying to ‘prove its worth’ to Kendrick Lamar
One of the more interesting claims in Drake’s lawsuit (from a business perspective) is that UMG was motivated to turn Not Like Us into as big a hit as it could because Lamar was in the midst of a “trial run” of UMG’s services when he released the track.
The complaint notes that, until 2023, Lamar had been signed to Top Dawg Entertainment, which in turn provided the rapper’s recordings to Aftermath Entertainment, the Dr. Dre-founded label that operates as a subsidiary of UMG and is distributed via UMG’s Interscope.
With that deal concluded in 2023, Lamar signed “a new short-term exclusive recording and licensing deal” with Interscope, and an exclusive publishing administration deal with UMPG.
The complaint alleges that “Lamar signed a short-term deal with UMG to see if UMG could prove its value to him – to promote him more effectively than any other music company could – in a compressed timeframe.”
If UMG successfully proved itself, “Lamar would then continue his relationship with UMG through a new, longer-term contract. On information and belief, that long-term deal was consummated in December of 2024,” the complaint stated.
3. Drake criticizes what he alleges to be UMG’s executive bonus structure
It’s not every day that a defamation lawsuit blames a corporate defendant’s actions on the company’s structure and remuneration practices, but that’s precisely what Drake’s lawsuit does.
The complaint states that UMG’s executives are siloed when it comes to performance pay, with the performance of an executive’s particular division counting for much more regarding bonuses than the performance of the company as a whole.
“For example, the annual incentive or bonus of Interscope’s CEO, John Janick, is based 90% on the financial success of Interscope and only 10% on the financial success of UMG generally,” the complaint stated, referring to the label to which Lamar is signed.
Lamar is signed to Interscope, part of Interscope Capitol Labels Group (ICLG), the umbrella company for UMG’s west coast labels (Interscope, Geffen A&M, and Capitol Music). Drake is signed to Republic, part of Republic Corps, which brings together UMG’s east coast labels (Def Jam, Island, Mercury, Republic).
“This division-based incentive structure creates perverse incentives within UMG. Mr. Janick and other Interscope executives are incentivized to maximize the financial success of the Interscope labels without taking into account the impact on other UMG labels,” Drake’s complaint asserts.
“Through the promotion of [Not Like Us] and its revitalizing impact on Kendrick Lamar’s entire recording catalog… Interscope and Interscope executives benefit regardless of the effect on other UMG labels, like Republic, which represents Drake.”
4. Drake repeats his allegations of payola and streaming manipulation
Drake may have dropped his petition against UMG and Spotify alleging streaming manipulation and pay-to-play (“payola”) deals in promoting Not Like Us, but he hasn’t actually dropped the allegations themselves. Many of them made it into the new defamation lawsuit, though this time Spotify was left out of it.
Last December, Spotify denied the allegations, stating that the company “has no economic incentive for users to stream Not Like Us over any of Drake’s tracks.”
That’s not how Drake sees it. “UMG also put a thumb on the scale by providing covert financial incentives to third parties to further spread the lies against Drake,” the complaint stated.
“Not only are these claims untrue, but the notion that we would seek to harm the reputation of any artist — let alone Drake — is illogical.”
Universal Music Group
The new complaint didn’t reiterate the now-dropped petition’s allegation that UMG offered Spotify a 30% discount on royalty rates for Not Like Us, instead stating simply that “UMG charged Spotify lower than usual licensing rates” for the track.
It alleges that UMG “conspired with and paid currently unknown parties” to use bots to inflate the stream count of Not Like Us, and created financial “incentives” for streaming services to promote the track and for radio stations to play it.
“According to confidential sources recently made known to Drake, certain UMG labels have engaged in pay-for-play arrangements with radio and streaming services to boost the popularity of specific songs, and used bots to artificially inflate streaming numbers,” the complaint alleges.
The lawsuit also alleges that Drake “received information that at least one member of UMG’s radio promotion team made payments to an independent radio promotor [sic] who agreed to transfer those payments to radio stations and/or radio station employees in exchange for those radio stations playing [Not Like Us].”
5. Drake claims that UMG dropped copyright protections for Not Like Us on YouTube, Twitch to ensure greater reach
Drake’s lawsuit alleges that UMG engaged in a unique form of promotion for Not Like Us (unique at least for UMG): Whitelisting the track – i.e. removing copyright protections – on YouTube and Twitch.
The result was “massive and immediate,” the complaint states, pointing to numerous “reaction videos” made by prominent social media personalities in the days following the track’s release.
UMG did this “for the purpose of spreading [Not Like Us], and its defamatory content, as broadly as possible and as quickly as possible,” the complaint asserts.
“UMG has a formal ban on whitelisting and had never before whitelisted a song on any platform, to plaintiff’s knowledge,” the complaint states, adding that UMG reinstated copyright protections on the track on or around June 2024.
Drake’s defamation suit, which specifically names UMG Recordings as the defendant, was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on January 15. UMG has not yet formally filed a legal response to the complaint.Music Business Worldwide
Article by:Source:
