Drake’s deal is up for renegotiation in 2025, and different revelations from his lawsuit towards Common Music
Warning: Making an attempt to comply with Drake’s authorized maneuvers might offer you whiplash.
Final week, the rapper withdrew a authorized petition towards Spotify and Common Music Group (UMG, father or mother firm of Republic, the label to which Drake is signed), through which he alleged a payola scheme and using bots to artificially inflate the recognition of Kendrick Lamar’s diss observe Not Like Us.
Nearly instantly after dropping that authorized motion, Drake circled and filed a full-blown defamation lawsuit towards UMG.
For its half, UMG has made it clear it sees the lawsuit as unfounded and intends to defend itself vigorously.
“Not solely are these claims unfaithful, however the notion that we’d search to hurt the status of any artist — not to mention Drake — is illogical,” a UMG spokesperson instructed MBW final week.
UMG’s spokesperson added: “We now have invested massively in his music and our staff around the globe have labored tirelessly for a few years to assist him obtain historic industrial and private monetary success.
“All through his profession, Drake has deliberately and efficiently used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to interact in conventionally outrageous back-and-forth ‘rap battles’ to precise his emotions about different artists.
“He now seeks to weaponize the authorized course of to silence an artist’s artistic expression and to hunt damages from UMG for distributing that artist’s music.
“We now have not and don’t have interaction in defamation — towards any particular person. On the similar time, we are going to vigorously defend this litigation to guard our folks and our status, in addition to any artist who may instantly or not directly turn into a frivolous litigation goal for having executed nothing greater than write a track.”
Drake argues that UMG is accountable for the allegedly defamatory nature of Not Like Us.
The lawsuit doesn’t identify Lamar as a defendant, solely UMG, and stresses that “this lawsuit is not in regards to the artist who created Not Like Us. It’s, as an alternative, completely about UMG, the music firm that determined to publish, promote, exploit and monetize allegations that it understood weren’t solely false, however harmful.”
Drake’s authorized grievance, which will be learn in full right here, begins with an account of an incident that happened at Drake’s palatial house in Toronto’s ritzy Bridle Path neighborhood on Might 7, 2024, three days after the discharge of Not Like Us. In an incident broadly lined by the media on the time, photographs had been fired at Drake’s house, injuring a safety guard.
The lawsuit goes on to doc a number of extra makes an attempt by members of the general public to enter Drake’s house.
“Within the twenty years main as much as Might of 2024, though Drake was continually within the public eye, nothing remotely like these occasions had ever occurred to him or his household. However these occasions weren’t coincidental,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit ties the incidents to the discharge of Not Like Us, and argues that UMG must be held solely accountable as a result of UMG “accepted, printed, and launched a marketing campaign to create a viral hit out of a rap observe that falsely accuses Drake of being a pedophile and requires violent retribution towards him. Although UMG enriched itself and its shareholders by exploiting Drake’s music for years, and knew that the salacious allegations towards Drake had been false, UMG selected company greed over the security and well-being of its artists.”
Not Like Us was considered one of 2024’s largest hits, racking up some 1 billion streams since its launch in Might of final 12 months, and setting a brand new file for many streams of a rap track within the US in a single day – 13 million within the 24 hours after the observe’s launch.
Drake’s grievance makes an attempt to do one thing that would show troublesome in a US court docket: To deal with track lyrics as a type of defamation. US courts have up to now rejected that argument, citing inventive expression as a type of protected speech.
Seemingly conscious of this, the grievance seeks to indicate authorized precedent for treating lyrical content material significantly in courts, most notably referring to the Georgia trial of Younger Thug on RICO costs, through which the prosecution reportedly used the rapper’s lyrics as proof.
“This lawsuit is… completely about UMG, the music firm that determined to publish, promote, exploit and monetize allegations that it understood weren’t solely false, however harmful.”
Drake’s authorized grievance towards Common Music Group
It additionally goals to indicate that the general public didn’t deal with Lamar’s lyrics as “artwork,” however quite as a press release of truth, documenting dozens of social media posts through which customers asserted that Not Like Us was proof that Drake had engaged in felony exercise.
Drake’s grievance accommodates rather more than allegations of defamation. Listed here are 5 issues we realized from Drake’s grievance towards UMG.
1. Drake’s contract with UMG is up for renegotiation in 2025, and Drake believes ‘Not Like Us’ is UMG’s method of gaining leverage
Drake’s grievance towards UMG revealed that the rapper’s contract with UMG, initially signed in 2009, is up for renegotiation this 12 months.
UMG’s Republic releases Drake’s information, and his music is printed by Common Music Publishing Group (UMPG).
The grievance provides a – let’s name it – concept for why UMG might have been motivated to wreck Drake’s status and profession.
“By the spring of 2024, UMG understood that the rise of streaming platforms had ‘enhanced the bargaining energy of artists. Established artists whose contracts are arising for renewal are in an improved place to demand greater take charges because of the enchancment within the visibility of money flows and threat discount,’” the grievance said, quoting an article from the MoneyFlow Analysis weblog.
Thus, “UMG was incentivized to behave, and in reality did act, in a way to scale back that bargaining leverage prematurely of upcoming negotiations with Drake over contract renewal,” the grievance alleged.
2. Drake claims that UMG might have been attempting to ‘show its value’ to Kendrick Lamar
One of many extra attention-grabbing claims in Drake’s lawsuit (from a enterprise perspective) is that UMG was motivated to show Not Like Us into as huge successful because it might as a result of Lamar was within the midst of a “trial run” of UMG’s providers when he launched the observe.
The grievance notes that, till 2023, Lamar had been signed to High Dawg Leisure, which in flip offered the rapper’s recordings to Aftermath Leisure, the Dr. Dre-founded label that operates as a subsidiary of UMG and is distributed by way of UMG’s Interscope.
With that deal concluded in 2023, Lamar signed “a brand new short-term unique recording and licensing deal” with Interscope, and an unique publishing administration cope with UMPG.
The grievance alleges that “Lamar signed a short-term cope with UMG to see if UMG might show its worth to him – to advertise him extra successfully than another music firm might – in a compressed timeframe.”
If UMG efficiently proved itself, “Lamar would then proceed his relationship with UMG by a brand new, longer-term contract. On info and perception, that long-term deal was consummated in December of 2024,” the grievance said.
3. Drake criticizes what he alleges to be UMG’s govt bonus construction
It’s not day-after-day {that a} defamation lawsuit blames a company defendant’s actions on the corporate’s construction and remuneration practices, however that’s exactly what Drake’s lawsuit does.
The grievance states that UMG’s executives are siloed in terms of efficiency pay, with the efficiency of an govt’s explicit division counting for rather more relating to bonuses than the efficiency of the corporate as a complete.
“For instance, the annual incentive or bonus of Interscope’s CEO, John Janick, relies 90% on the monetary success of Interscope and solely 10% on the monetary success of UMG usually,” the grievance said, referring to the label to which Lamar is signed.
Lamar is signed to Interscope, a part of Interscope Capitol Labels Group (ICLG), the umbrella firm for UMG’s west coast labels (Interscope, Geffen A&M, and Capitol Music). Drake is signed to Republic, a part of Republic Corps, which brings collectively UMG’s east coast labels (Def Jam, Island, Mercury, Republic).
“This division-based incentive construction creates perverse incentives inside UMG. Mr. Janick and different Interscope executives are incentivized to maximise the monetary success of the Interscope labels with out bearing in mind the impression on different UMG labels,” Drake’s grievance asserts.
“Via the promotion of [Not Like Us] and its revitalizing impression on Kendrick Lamar’s complete recording catalog… Interscope and Interscope executives profit whatever the impact on different UMG labels, like Republic, which represents Drake.”
4. Drake repeats his allegations of payola and streaming manipulation
Drake might have dropped his petition towards UMG and Spotify alleging streaming manipulation and pay-to-play (“payola”) offers in selling Not Like Us, however he hasn’t really dropped the allegations themselves. Lots of them made it into the brand new defamation lawsuit, although this time Spotify was neglected of it.
Final December, Spotify denied the allegations, stating that the corporate “has no financial incentive for customers to stream Not Like Us over any of Drake’s tracks.”
That’s not how Drake sees it. “UMG additionally put a thumb on the size by offering covert monetary incentives to 3rd events to additional unfold the lies towards Drake,” the grievance said.
“Not solely are these claims unfaithful, however the notion that we’d search to hurt the status of any artist — not to mention Drake — is illogical.”
Common Music Group
The brand new grievance didn’t reiterate the now-dropped petition’s allegation that UMG provided Spotify a 30% low cost on royalty charges for Not Like Us, as an alternative stating merely that “UMG charged Spotify decrease than standard licensing charges” for the observe.
It alleges that UMG “conspired with and paid presently unknown events” to make use of bots to inflate the stream rely of Not Like Us, and created monetary “incentives” for streaming providers to advertise the observe and for radio stations to play it.
“Based on confidential sources not too long ago made recognized to Drake, sure UMG labels have engaged in pay-for-play preparations with radio and streaming providers to spice up the recognition of particular songs, and used bots to artificially inflate streaming numbers,” the grievance alleges.
The lawsuit additionally alleges that Drake “obtained info that no less than one member of UMG’s radio promotion crew made funds to an unbiased radio promotor [sic] who agreed to switch these funds to radio stations and/or radio station staff in alternate for these radio stations enjoying [Not Like Us].”
5. Drake claims that UMG dropped copyright protections for Not Like Us on YouTube, Twitch to make sure better attain
Drake’s lawsuit alleges that UMG engaged in a novel type of promotion for Not Like Us (distinctive no less than for UMG): Whitelisting the observe – i.e. eradicating copyright protections – on YouTube and Twitch.
The end result was “huge and instant,” the grievance states, pointing to quite a few “response movies” made by distinguished social media personalities within the days following the observe’s launch.
UMG did this “for the aim of spreading [Not Like Us], and its defamatory content material, as broadly as potential and as rapidly as potential,” the grievance asserts.
“UMG has a proper ban on whitelisting and had by no means earlier than whitelisted a track on any platform, to plaintiff’s information,” the grievance states, including that UMG reinstated copyright protections on the observe on or round June 2024.
Drake’s defamation swimsuit, which particularly names UMG Recordings because the defendant, was filed within the US District Court docket for the Southern District of New York on January 15. UMG has not but formally filed a authorized response to the grievance.Music Enterprise Worldwide
