Spotify has formally rejected Drake’s current accusations that the streaming large helped Common Music Group illegally inflate streams of Kendrick Lamar’s diss observe “Not Like Us,” Billboard stories and Pitchfork can verify. In court docket paperwork seen by Pitchfork, Spotify refers to Drake’s petitions as “legally poor” and writes that they “ought to be denied.”
In filings issued Friday (December 20) in New York Supreme Court docket, Spotify refuted Drake’s allegations that the streamer used bots to log 30,000 streams of “Not Like Us” across the tune’s preliminary launch, and that the corporate accepted undisclosed funds and biased suggestions as a part of a scheme to spice up Lamar’s observe.
“Opposite to the allegations within the Petition,” the submitting reads, “UMG and Spotify have by no means had any association through which UMG ‘charged Spotify licensing charges 30 p.c decrease than its common licensing charges for ‘Not Like Us’ in trade for Spotify affirmatively recommending [“Not Like Us”]”, together with ‘to customers who’re trying to find different songs and artists.’”
An accompanying affirmation doc filed by Spotify worker David Kaefer states that Spotify “invests closely in automated and handbook critiques to forestall, detect, and mitigate the impression of synthetic streaming on our platform.” Kaefer continued: “Once we determine tried stream manipulation, we take motion which will embody eradicating streaming numbers, withholding royalties and charging penalty charges. Confirmed and suspected synthetic streams are additionally faraway from our chart calculations. This helps us to guard royalty payouts for trustworthy, hardworking artists.”
Spotify additionally criticized the type of Drake’s authorized motion, which exists as “pre-action” petitions (one filed in New York, one in Texas) as a substitute of lawsuits. “What petitioner is in search of to do right here,” the submitting states, “is to bypass the traditional pleading necessities … and procure by the use of pre-action discovery that which it might solely be entitled to hunt had been it to outlive a movement to dismiss.” Spotify’s authorized crew referred to the strategy as a “subversion of the traditional judicial course of.”
In a press release to Pitchfork, a Spotify spokesperson wrote: “Spotify has no financial incentive for customers to stream ‘Not Like Us‘ over any of Drake’s tracks.” Pitchfork has reached out to Drake’s representatives for remark.
UMG has but to make an official submitting on the matter, however issued a press release following Drake’s second petition final month. “The suggestion that UMG would do something to undermine any of its artists is offensive and unfaithful,” a spokesperson for the corporate wrote. “We make use of the very best moral practices in our advertising and promotional campaigns. No quantity of contrived and absurd authorized arguments on this pre-action submission can masks the truth that followers select the music they wish to hear.”