Spotify Shuts Down Drake Lawsuit Allegations

Last month Canadian rapper, Drake, filed a lawsuit against Spotify and Universal Music Group accusing them of artificially inflating the streams for Kendrick Lamar's Drake diss track, "Not Like Us [click here if you missed that]."

Spotify rips apart Drake's argument...

From The Hollywood Reporter

Spotify has officially entered the Drake–Kendrick Lamar beef group chat.

The top music streamer responded to Drake’s claim that the company inflated the streams of Lamar’s diss song aimed at him on Friday in a new filing, saying: “UMG and Spotify have never had any arrangement in which UMG charged Spotify licensing rates 30 percent lower than its usual licensing rates for ‘Not Like Us’ in exchange for Spotify affirmatively recommending [‘Not Like Us]’, including ‘to users who are searching for other songs and artists.’”

“The Petition claims that an unidentified individual reported on a podcast that he used bots to achieve 30,000,000 streams on Spotify in the first days of the release of ‘Not Like Us.’ Spotify found no evidence to substantiate this claim,” the streamer continued in its opposition papers.

Spotify’s filing comes a month after Drake’s Frozen Moments company filed a petition in a New York court and alleged that Spotify inflated the streams of “Not Like Us” and that UMG — the parent label both rappers are signed to — “launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves with a song, ‘Not Like Us,’ in order to make that song go viral, including by using ‘bots’ and pay-to-play agreements.”

“Spotify has no economic incentive for users to stream ‘Not Like Us” over any of Drake’s tracks. Only one of Spotify for Artists’ tools, Marquee, was purchased on behalf of the song, for €500 to promote the track in France. Marquee is a visual ad that is disclosed to users as a Sponsored Recommendation,” a spokesperson for Spotify said.

In its filing, Spotify says it “invests heavily in automated and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of artificial streaming on our platform. When we identify attempted stream manipulation, we take action that may include removing streaming numbers, withholding royalties and charging penalty fees. Confirmed and suspected artificial streams are also removed from our chart calculations. This helps us to protect royalty payouts for honest, hardworking artists.”