Universal Music recently launched a $500 million lawsuit against Believe accusing the distributor of facilitating streaming fraud via its TuneCore business. Though if Universal really wants to crackdown on streaming fraud it could begin by having a stern word with its own marketing executives who know a thing or two about manipulating streams. Or at least, that’s according to bombastic legal filings made by a superstar with a longstanding alliance with the major music company: Aubrey Drake Graham – better known as Drake.
In the first of two filings, this one with the courts in New York, Drake’s company Frozen Moments accuses Universal of employing all sorts of dodgy tactics to boost the streams of certain tracks. But not the Drake tracks it distributes and promotes via its Republic division.
No, actually, the very opposite of that. Because the dodgy tactics were employed to boost Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’, one of a series of diss tracks targeting Drake. Which means yes, the long running pop feud between Drake and Lamar has finally reached a court of law, ramping everything up to almost K-pop levels of pettiness.
But beyond the tabloid drama of a silly feud, for Universal – keen to position itself as a leader in the battle against streaming fraud – some of the allegations in Drake’s legal filings are potentially very damaging. Which is presumably why it has already dubbed those allegations “offensive and untrue”, while insisting that Drake’s legal arguments are “contrived and absurd”.
Some of the promo tactics Universal allegedly employed to boost streams of ‘Not Like Us’ are pretty standard, including influencing the Spotify algorithm by basically utilising the streaming services’s controversial but legit Discovery Mode system. But some of the alleged tactics are less legit and, in some cases, outright illegal.
Universal, Drake alleges, “conspired with and paid currently unknown parties to use ‘bots’ to artificially inflate the spread of ‘Not Like Us’ and deceive consumers into believing the song was more popular than it was in reality”. That allegation seems to be mainly based on comments made on a podcast earlier this year by a man who claimed he was paid by someone affiliated with Universal’s Interscope label to manipulate streams of Lamar’s diss track.
He claims to have been paid $2500 up front – with the promise of another $2500 and a percentage of the track’s royalties – to use bots to generate 30 million streams of Lamar’s song. He did that on Spotify, he claimed, because Spotify is “the easiest platform ‘to bot’ because it does not, like other streaming platforms, have certain security measures ‘when it comes to bot protection’”.
Universal is also accused of employing a much more traditional scam to boost the profile of ‘Not Like Us’, paying radio stations to play the track, aka payola. That’s an illegal practice in the US. So much so, the legal filing notes, Universal paid $12 million as part of a settlement deal back in 2006 following an investigation by the New York Attorney General into the use of payola at the major.
Drake’s second legal filing with the courts in Texas expands on the payola claims, specifically alleging that Universal “funneled payments” to US radio giant iHeart.
A more modern spin on payola is paying podcasters and social media influencers to plug and promote a track without declaring their commercial relationship with the artist or label – a practice that the Federal Trade Commission classified as “illegal payola” in 2020 – and which, back in the New York filing, Drake alleges was also employed as part of Universal’s promotion of ‘Not Like Us’.
One last scam was then employed on another digital platform, Drake claims. Online sources, he says, reported that when users asked Apple’s Siri to play his album ‘Certified Loverboy’ it actually played ‘Not Like Us’, “which contains the lyric ‘certified pedophile’, an allegation against Drake”. That, the legal filing states, was probably because Universal “paid, or approved payments to, Apple Inc to have its voice-activated digital assistant purposely misdirect users to ‘Not Like Us’”.
Aside from aiding Lamar in his big beef with Drake, the court filing argues that – by artificially boosted the streams of ‘Not Like Us’ – Universal ensured there would be fewer streams and therefore lower royalty payments for other artists. “Streaming is a zero-sum game”, the filing states. “Every time a song ‘breaks through’, it means another artist does not”. Universal’s decision to “saturate the music market with ‘Not Like Us’”, therefore, “comes at the expense of its other artists, like Drake”.
As for why Universal would go to all these efforts to promote one of its artists to the detriment of another of its artists, well, Drake argues, it’s because Interscope bosses decided that massively boosting ‘Not Like Us’ would result in a revenue surge within Interscope that would boost their own bonuses.
Drake’s court filings aren’t actually lawsuits, but petitions seeking to force Universal, Spotify and iHeart to hand over documents and data relating to the promotion and streaming of ‘Not Like Us’. In the New York filing, Frozen Moments says it has “a viable cause of action for civil RICO” – so that’s an action against a ‘racketeer influenced and corrupt organisation’ – based on “acts of wire fraud, mail fraud and/or bribery”. But it “requires additional information in order to frame his complaint”.
In the Texas filing, Drake talks about having a “claim for defamation” on the basis that Lamar’s lyrics in ‘Not Like Us’ falsely accused him of being a “certified pedophile” and “predator”. Universal could have refused to release the track, or demanded a change to those lyrics, he says, but it chose not to.
Drake also claims that he has tried to address his grievances directly with Universal, but it “refused to engage in negotiations, and insisted that it is not responsible for its own actions”. Instead, he claims, Universal said Drake should sue Lamar directly. Which would be more fun but, probably, less significant.
Universal issued a response after the first legal filing was made in New York. The full statement is as follows: “The suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue. We employ the highest ethical practices in our marketing and promotional campaigns. No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear”.