Hip-hop icon Drake is sueing Universal Music Group (UMG) and Spotify, with charges that they deliberately manipulated and increased the stream numbers for his song’s diss from Kendrick Lamar’s album: Not Like Us.
In a petition filed in New York, Drake’s company, Frozen Moments LLC, claimed UMG and Spotify utilized bots, payola, and underhanded tactics to inflate streams of Lamar’s track, which hit 96 million streams in no time, topped the charts, and was favored on the radio. The claim also says Spotify offered promotional boosts in exchange for discounted licensing deals for the song.
He further filed a defamation suit in Texas, accusing UMG of knowingly distributing a track that lied about him being a pedophile. However, UMG has disregarded these allegations on grounds of a lack thereof, claiming they observe strict ethics in their campaigns.
This legal battle just opened a Pandora’s box in this fight between Drake and Lamar, considering that both artists are their key players under the labels of UMG: Republic Records and Interscope, respectively.
