{"id":3762,"date":"2025-01-19T22:09:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-19T22:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/drake-drops-action-against-umg-spotify-over-kendricks-not-like-us\/"},"modified":"2025-01-19T22:09:23","modified_gmt":"2025-01-19T22:09:23","slug":"drake-drops-action-against-umg-spotify-over-kendricks-not-like-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/drake-drops-action-against-umg-spotify-over-kendricks-not-like-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Drake Drops Action Against UMG & Spotify Over Kendrick\u2019s \u2018Not Like Us\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tUPDATE 11:30AM ET<\/strong>: Hours after withdrawing the earlier petition, Drake\u2019s attorneys have now filed a full-fledged defamation lawsuit against his longtime label \u2013 claiming Universal Music Group knew Kendrick Lamar\u2019s \u201cinflammatory and shocking allegations\u201d were false but chose to place \u201ccorporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.\u201d Read the full story here<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n\tOur earlier story:<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tDrake<\/a> has dropped his legal action accusing Universal Music Group (UMG) and Spotify of artificially inflating the popularity of Kendrick Lamar<\/a>\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d less than two months after he first filed it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe action, filed in November, accused UMG and Spotify of an illegal \u201cscheme\u201d involving bots, payola and other methods to pump up Lamar\u2019s song \u2014 a track that savagely attacked Drake amid an ongoing feud between the two stars.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in a filing Tuesday (Jan. 14) in Manhattan court, Drake\u2019s company Frozen Moments LLC said it would voluntarily withdraw the action \u201cwithout costs to any party.\u201d Another similar petition, filed in Texas against UMG and iHeartRadio alleging Lamar\u2019s song was defamatory, remains pending.<\/p>\n

\n\tAn attorney for Drake did not immediately return a request for comment. A spokesman for UMG declined to comment. A representative for Spotify did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tDrake shocked the music industry in November when he went to court \u2014 a remarkable twist in a high-profile beef that saw Drake and Lamar exchange stinging diss tracks over a period of months earlier in the year. That a rapper would take such a dispute to court seemed almost unthinkable at the time, and Drake has been ridiculed in some corners of the hip-hop world for doing so.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actions also represented a stunning rift between Drake and UMG, where the star has spent his entire career \u2014 first through signing a deal with Lil Wayne\u2019s Young Money imprint, which was distributed by Republic Records, then by signing directly to Republic.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe New York petition accused UMG of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the federal \u201cRICO\u201d statute often used against organized crime. He accused Spotify of participating in the scheme by charging reduced licensing fees in exchange for recommending the song to users. A day later, he filed a similar action in Texas, suggesting that UMG had legally defamed him by releasing a song that \u201cfalsely\u201d accused him of being a \u201csex offender.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filings were not full-fledged lawsuits, but rather \u201cpre-action\u201d petitions aimed petition seeking to secure information so that a full lawsuit can be filed.<\/p>\n

\n\tUMG had not yet responded to either action. But in a stinging response last month, Spotify called the allegations \u201cfalse\u201d and flatly denied that it struck any deal with UMG to support Lamar\u2019s song. And the company took aim at the unusual way he filed the allegations, saying he had done so because his allegations were too flimsy to pass muster in an actual lawsuit and would have been quickly dismissed: \u201cThis subversion of the normal judicial process should be rejected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Tuesday\u2019s filing, attorneys for Drake said they had met with both UMG and Spotify ahead of the withdrawal. Spotify had \u201cno objection\u201d to the dismissal, according to the filing, but the record \u201creserved its position\u201d about whether it would challenge the move in some way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE 11:30AM ET: Hours after withdrawing the earlier petition, Drake\u2019s attorneys have now filed a full-fledged defamation lawsuit against his longtime label \u2013 claiming Universal Music Group knew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[715,441,1108,4334,1217,1109],"class_list":["post-3762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-action","tag-drake","tag-drops","tag-kendricks","tag-spotify","tag-umg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}