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Maurene Ryan Comey, a lead prosecutor in the sex trafficking case against Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, has joined the prosecutors’ team in the ongoing case against Sean “Diddy” Combs. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Comey, who also happens to be the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, […]
The music industry’s lawyers were busy this year — from Diddy’s downfall to Live Nation’s antitrust case to Young Thug’s gang charges to novel questions about AI.
An Atlanta jury on Tuesday issued a verdict largely acquitting Young Thug’s two remaining co-defendants in the long-running trial of his alleged YSL gang.
After nearly a year of testimony, jurors found Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick not guilty on any of the slew of charges he was facing. They found Shannon Stillwell guilty on a single charge of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, but not guilty on any others.
The verdict, which will allow both men to walk free on Tuesday, is a major loss for the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, which had accused Kendrick and Stillwell of racketeering, murder, firearms and drug charges – accusations that exceeded those leveled against Thug himself.
After the verdict was read, Judge Paige Reese Whitaker sentenced Stillwell to 10 years in prison but ordered him to serve only two, which were covered by time already served during the long-running trial. The remaining eight years of his sentence will be served on probation, the judge said.
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The verdict came a month after Thug himself escaped the case. After botched testimony from a state’s witness sparked talk of a mistrial, Thug’s attorneys rejected a plea deal with prosecutors and instead opted to simply plead guilty – a gamble that paid off when Whitaker sentenced him to just 15 years probation with no time served in prison.
Combined with Thug’s exit, Tuesday’s verdict marks the end of criminal trial that has captivated the music industry for nearly than two years. Pitting prosecutors in America’s rap capital against one of hip-hop’s biggest stars, the YSL case has raised big questions — about the fairness of the criminal justice system; about violent personas in modern hip-hop; and about prosecutors using rap lyrics as evidence.
Kendrick and Stillwell were two of the more than two dozen men indicted alongside Thug in May 2022. In a sweeping indictment, prosecutors alleged that his “YSL” — nominally a record label standing for “Young Stoner Life” — was also a violent gang called “Young Slime Life” that had wrought “havoc” on the Atlanta area for nearly a decade.
The case, built around Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, claimed that YSL committed murders, carjackings, and many other crimes. Prosecutors said Thug was “King Slime,” operating as a criminal boss amid his rise to fame, but accused Kendrick and Stillwell of some of the most serious crimes — including carrying out the 2015 murder of rival gang leader Donovan Thomas that played a central role in the prosecution’s case.
From the start, the YSL case was beset by delays. Starting in January 2023, it took an unprecedented 10-month process just to pick a jury. After the trial itself got underway in November 2023, prosecutors meandered through a vast list of witnesses that included more than 100 names. Earlier this year, the case was delayed for weeks over a bizarre episode that resulted in the presiding judge being removed from the case.
Days before Thug pleaded guilty, several of his co-defendants either did the same or took plea deals. But Kendrick and Stillwell rejected offers and opted to continue to litigate the case, leading to Tuesday’s verdict.
Thought he trial is over, the YSL case isn’t quite over. Several other defendants were separated from the case early in the proceedings and could face similar trials in the future.
Even by the standards of a litigious business, Drake’s recent legal actions against Universal Music Group and other companies look like odd filings.
On Nov. 25, Drake filed an action accusing UMG and Spotify of acting to “artificially inflate” the popularity of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us”; the next day, he made a similar filing against UMG and iHeartRadio, alleging that UMG’s release of the song could also constitute defamation. The basic idea seems to be that “Not Like Us,” Lamar’s diss track against Drake, became so successful because it was rigged.
“UMG did not rely on chance, or even ordinary business practices,” Drake’s lawyers wrote in the first filing. “It instead launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves.” The filings accuse UMG and its partners of acting in ways that are fraudulent, including using “bots” and payola, but little proof is provided — a “whistleblower,” an “inside source known to petitioner” and an assertion that Drake “learned of at least one UMG employee making payments to an independent radio promoter” who had agreed to pay stations. (The company has said in a statement to Billboard that “the suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue.”)
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These filings aren’t lawsuits, but rather legal attempts to get information that might provide the basis for them. And since Lamar’s success doesn’t really come at the expense of Drake’s — at least any more than any artist becomes popular at the expense of any other — it’s hard not to wonder if Drake is just upset that, with “Not Like Us,” Lamar seems to have won the long-running feud between them. That’s a long story — well-summarized here — but Drake and Lamar basically traded diss tracks for hip-hop fans until Lamar’s scathing “Not Like Us” topped the Billboard Hot 100. Drake is essentially claiming that UMG — for which both rappers record under different labels — cheated on Lamar’s behalf. It was rigged.
Quick: What other famous person does this remind you of? Hints: When he wins, he revels in his success; when he loses, he blames it on unfairness and litigates. Yes, I’m going there: Drake has become Trumpian.
Before Team Drizzy throws bottles of Virginia Black Whiskey by Drake, Drake is a skilled rapper, a compelling performer, and a fantastic Drake — it’s hard to compare him to other artists, both because he doesn’t fit neatly into a genre and because his greatest talent is being Drake. (Drake the artist seems to be an exaggerated version of Drake the person, with the soap operatic conflict amped up and the more mundane parts edited out.)
Both Drake and Trump thrive on success and fandom — their fans root for them because they win and they win because their fans root for them. (Trump the politician seems to be an exaggerated version of Trump the person, with the cultural conflict amped up and the boring parts edited out.) Neither gets a ton of respect from critics, but they are both popular beyond belief, and they love to win and then show off that they did. Drake’s feud with Lamar became so compelling because each was a champion in his own way — Drake the unmatched entertainer, Lamar the iconic old-school lyricist. By scoring a No. 1 single with a diss track, an unusual achievement, Lamar essentially beat Drake at his own game.
Is this why Drake is filing legal actions? Most people file litigation for financial restitution, to get an injunction to stop something, or to win negotiating leverage. In this case, the first would be hard to calculate, the second involves practices that would be hard to prove and the third seems unlikely — why would Drake want out of the UMG deal he signed in 2021, which includes publishing and merchandise rights and was described as “Lebron sized.” The only thing we know about Drake’s motive is that his second filing says he “brings this action for a discrete and specific purpose: to understand whether, and how, UMG funneled payments to iHeartRadio and its radio stations as part of a pay-to-play scheme.” Perhaps, like Trump, he simply can’t imagine the possibility that he would lose a fair fight.
Does Drake have a case? If UMG really had the power to make any song a hit, wouldn’t it do so more frequently? If anyone thinks Drake hasn’t received enough marketing or promotion — and I have yet to meet such a person — it’s worth considering that some Spotify subscribers found the service’s promotion of Scorpion so extensive that they asked for a refund. This, too, has political echoes: If U.S. elections are as unfair as Trump claims, how can he trust the one in November?
Like Trump, Drake loves the one-upmanship drama of competition — but only, apparently, when he wins. Trump ran several campaigns based partly on the politics of insult comedy — his dog-whistle racism was obviously far worse — but he doesn’t like to be on the receiving end of it. (The kind of thin skin that would be a personal fault in most is terrifying in the U.S. president.)
If rappers could pursue defamation claims for diss tracks, much less against the labels that release them, hip-hop never would have made it out of the Bronx. Lamar called Drake a certified pedophile, which is an ugly accusation, and a pun on Drake’s Certified Lover Boy, but not an actual thing; the reason Drake looks bad isn’t because people believe it but because “Not Like Us” is catchier and wittier than his own diss tracks. Drake certainly has the right to ask about music promotion practices — even in a legal filing. If no evidence of this emerges, though, he will need to seek satisfaction the old-fashioned way — by releasing a more compelling single.
A Manhattan federal judge on Wednesday (Nov. 27) again refused to release Sean “Diddy” Combs on bail ahead of his sex trafficking and racketeering trial next year, citing the rapper’s “propensity for violence” and evidence that he poses “a serious risk of witness tampering.”
The star’s lawyers had argued he could be released on a $50 million bond and live under house arrest with “near-total” restrictions, but federal prosecutors had argued that Diddy had been trying to “subvert the integrity” of the case from jail and would continue to do so if released.
In a ruling issued late Wednesday, Judge Arun Subramanian sided with the government, saying that “no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community” if Combs was released ahead of trial.
“There is compelling evidence of Combs’s propensity for violence,” the judge wrote. “There is evidence supporting a serious risk of witness tampering.”
In denying bail, Judge Subramanian cited evidence that Combs had “initiated and had unexplained communication” with a witness who had been called to testify before the grand jury and that he had likely already violated prison rules since he was arrested in September. The judge also cited a legal precedent that said “wealthy defendants” should not be released on bail to “self-funded private jails.”
“Given the nature of the allegations in this case and the information provided by the government, the Court doubts the sufficiency of any conditions that place trust in Combs and individuals in his employ —like a private security detail — to follow those conditions,” Judge Subramanian wrote.
A spokesperson for Combs did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday evening.
Combs was indicted in September, charged with running a sprawling criminal operation aimed at satisfying his need for “sexual gratification.” The case centers on elaborate “freak off” parties in which Combs and others would allegedly ply victims with drugs and then coerce them into having sex, as well as on alleged acts of violence to keep victims silent.
A trial is currently set to start on May 5. If convicted on all of the charges, Combs faces a potential life prison sentence.
At a hearing in September, Judge Andrew L. Carter refused to release Combs on bail, saying that prosecutors had presented “clear and convincing evidence” that he posed a danger to the community. He said “no condition or set of conditions” could guard against the risk of Combs obstructing the investigation or threatening or harming witnesses.
Earlier this month, Combs’ lawyers renewed their request for bail with Judge Subramanian, who took over the case last month after Judge Carter recused himself. They again offered to pay a $50 million bond but with a “far more robust” package of restrictions. They also cited the recent release of former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries after he was arrested on similar sex trafficking charges.
“There is no legal basis for continuing to force Mr. Combs to prepare for trial from jail,” his lawyers wrote in court filings.
The government fired back last week, arguing that Combs would still pose a grave risk of obstruction of justice if released. In doing so, they accused Diddy of trying to tamper with the case from behind bars, including reaching out to witnesses, leaking favorable materials, and orchestrating “social media campaigns” to influence public opinion and taint the jury pool.
“Defendant has continued to engage in a relentless course of obstructive conduct designed to subvert the integrity of these proceedings,” the prosecution wrote in the filing.
The decision means that until trial, Combs will remain in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal prison in Brooklyn often used to house defendants awaiting trial. He will also likely re-launch his appeal of the bail issue to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which has been on hold while he asked Judge Subramanian to reconsider.
Marilyn Manson has dropped his defamation lawsuit against Evan Rachel Wood and agreed to pay her $327,000 in legal fees, according to legal documents obtained by Billboard, officially ending a case that the shock rocker first lodged against his former girlfriend more than two and a half years ago.
Filed in March 2022, the lawsuit accused Wood of conspiring with another woman, Ashley Gore, to falsely portray Manson (real name Brian Warner) as a “rapist and abuser” in the public eye. Both women appeared in the 2022 documentary Phoenix Rising, in which Wood detailed her accusations of sexual abuse against the singer. The lawsuit claimed that both women “secretly recruited, coordinated, and pressured prospective accusers to emerge simultaneously with allegations of rape and abuse against Manson, and brazenly claim that it took 10 or more years to ‘realize’ their consensual relationships with Warner were supposedly abusive.”
But Manson’s lawsuit suffered a major blow in May 2023 after a judge largely sided with Wood in her move to have it thrown out by invoking California’s anti-SLAPP statute, which makes it easier for judges to dismiss cases that threaten free speech. In that ruling, the judge struck down much of Manson’s case after finding that the rocker had not shown he would ultimately be able to prove many of his accusations against Wood. Manson had appealed that decision this past August.
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“Marilyn Manson — whose real name is Brian Warner — filed a lawsuit against Ms. Wood as a publicity stunt to try to undermine the credibility of his many accusers and revive his faltering career,” Wood’s lawyer Michael J. Kump said in a statement sent to Billboard. “But his attempt to silence and intimidate Ms. Wood failed. As the trial court correctly found, Warner’s claims were meritless. Warner’s decision to finally abandon his lawsuit and pay Ms. Wood her full fee award of almost $327,000 only confirms as much.”
In his own statement, Manson’s attorney Howard King said, “After 4 years of fighting a battle where he was able to tell the truth, Brian is pleased to dismiss his still-pending claims and appeal in order to close the door on this chapter of his life.”
The public battle between Manson and Wood kicked off in February 2021, when Wood claimed in an Instagram post that Manson “started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years.” In addition to Wood’s accusations, Manson has been hit with multiple sexual misconduct lawsuits over the last several years from women including former assistant Ashley Walters, model Ashley Morgan Smithline, Game of Thrones actress Esme Bianco and two Jane Doe accusers.
The majority of these cases are no longer active. In May 2022, a judge dismissed Walters’ lawsuit, citing the statute of limitations. Manson subsequently settled with both Bianco and one of the Jane Doe accusers, while Smithline recanted her allegations and claimed that Wood and others had “manipulated” her into bringing them.
Manson has denied all of the allegations against him.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Drake goes to legal war over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us”; Miley Cyrus strikes back at a copyright lawsuit over her chart-topping “Flowers”; Universal Music Group responds to Limp Bizkit’s $200 million royalties lawsuit; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Drake Takes UMG To Court
Back in May, as Kendrick Lamar and Drake exchanged scathing diss tracks, I wrote an entire story dismissing the idea that Drake would sue over the beef. Sure, these were very specific insults from Kendrick, and I talked to legal experts about what it might look like if he did. But it was almost unthinkable that he’d really do it. As I wrote at the time, “An actual lawsuit seems unlikely, for the simple reason that any rapper responding to a diss track with a team of lawyers would be committing reputational suicide.”
Welp, here we are. In a pair of actions filed Monday (Nov. 25) in New York and Texas, Drake and his lawyers went to legal war over “Not Like Us” — only not with Lamar himself, but with the label that both superstars have called home for the majority of their careers.
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In the New York petition, Drake’s attorneys accused Universal Music Group (UMG) of launching an illegal “scheme” involving bots, payola and other methods to artificially pump up Lamar’s song. In the Texas filing, he echoed those claims but went even further, complaining that UMG could have blocked the release of a song that “falsely” accused him of being a “pedophile,” but instead “chose to do the opposite.”
“UMG designed, financed and then executed a plan to turn ‘Not Like Us’ into a viral mega-hit with the intent of using the spectacle of harm to Drake and his businesses to drive consumer hysteria and, of course, massive revenues,” his lawyers write. “That plan succeeded, likely beyond UMG’s wildest expectations.”
It’s worth noting that neither action is quite a lawsuit. Both were “pre-action” filings, seeking discovery and depositions that might yield evidence supporting such claims. But in seeking that info, Drake’s lawyers leveled serious accusations: In New York, they accused UMG of racketeering, deceptive business practices and false advertising; in Texas, they said they had enough evidence to sue the company for defamation, and might also tack on civil fraud and racketeering claims.
UMG, for its part, quickly fired back, calling the allegations “offensive and untrue” and stressing that it employs the “highest ethical practices” in promotion: “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.”
Drake’s allegations raise tricky questions about the line between litigation and public relations. The star is no dummy when it comes to the music business, and he’s repped in these cases by top partners at an elite BigLaw firm. It’s hard to imagine they’d file entirely baseless actions based purely on hurt feelings. But in a hip-hop world that prizes authenticity above all else, it’s also fair to wonder if the benefits of this approach can possibly outweigh the risk of reputational harm.
Stay with Billboard as this dispute moves forward — we’ll keep you updated on every development.
THE OTHER TOP STORY: Miley Strikes Back
Two months after Miley Cyrus was hit with an eyebrow-raising copyright infringement lawsuit over her chart-topping “Flowers,” her attorneys fired back with an interesting response.
Raised eyebrows, you say? The case, which claims “Flowers” infringes the copyright to Bruno Mars’ “When I Was Your Man,” targets an “answer song” — a track with lyrics that overtly respond to those of an earlier song. In this case, fans speculated that Cyrus was alluding to a song that her ex-husband had loved. Does that kind of lyrical riffing amount to infringement? Experts didn’t think so at the time.
But in September, Miley was hit with a lawsuit seeking to prove that it does, arguing that her smash hit “would not exist” without Mars’ song. Adding to the intrigue? The case was filed not by Mars himself, but by an investment firm that bought out the rights of one of his co-writers.
In her first response to the case this week, attorneys for Miley said that the total lack of involvement from Mars and two other co-writers was not some procedural quirk in the case, but rather a “fatal flaw” that required the outright dismissal of the lawsuit.
For more, go read our full story on Miley’s response, which includes access to the full motion filed by her attorneys.
Other top stories this week…
JUST ONE OF THOSE SUITS – Universal Music Group (UMG) fired back at a lawsuit from Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst claiming the label owes the band more than $200 million, calling the allegations “fiction” and demanding they be thrown out of court. Durst alleged last month he had “not seen a dime in royalties” over the decades, but UMG said in its first response that it had paid the band millions and that the lawsuit is “based on a fallacy.”
ST. LUNATICS DROP OUT – Three of Nelly’s former St. Lunatics bandmates (childhood friends Murphy Lee, Kyjuan and City Spud) formally dropped out of a lawsuit seeking royalties from the rapper’s breakout album Country Grammar — two months after they said they hadn’t wanted to sue him in the first place.
YOUNG THUG LAWSUIT – Now that he’s home from jail, attorneys for concert giant AEG said they’re ready to push ahead with a civil lawsuit accusing the rapper of violating an exclusive touring agreement. Filed in 2020 but long delayed by his criminal case, the case claims Young Thug owes more than $5 million under the deal and that he’s obligated to hand over some of his music to pay down that debt. And in newer filings, AEG leveled new accusations that Thug improperly sold off some of those rights while the case was pending.
TRUMP GUITARS – Guitar manufacturer Gibson sent a cease-and-desist letter to the branding agency behind a line “Trump Guitars” endorsed by President-elect Donald Trump, alleging the design of the instrument infringes the company’s trademark rights to the shape of the famed Les Paul guitar.
TORY LANEZ UPDATE – California prosecutors flatly rejected recent claims made by Tory Lanez’s legal team that the gun he allegedly used to shoot Megan Thee Stallion has gone “missing,” calling the accusations about vanished evidence “demonstrably false” and “troubling.” Those arguments were made as part of Lanez’s appeal seeking to overturn his felony convictions over the 2020 shooting.
‘ELECTRIC AVENUE’ SETTLEMENT – Donald Trump reached an agreement with Eddy Grant to resolve a long-running lawsuit over his use of “Electric Avenue” without permission in a 2020 campaign video. The deal came two months after a federal judge ruled that Trump infringed the copyright to the 1982 hit, and will resolve any need for further litigation to figure out how much the President-elect must pay in damages under that ruling.
SONY ENDS RACE CASE – Sony Music settled a lawsuit filed by a former assistant to Columbia Records chief executive Ron Perry who claimed she was forced to resign after pushing back on hiring practices that allegedly discriminated against white applicants. Sony had called those accusations “contradictory and false” and was actively seeking to have the case dismissed when the settlement was reached.
SIRIUS TROUBLE? A New York state judge ruled that SiriusXM violated federal consumer protection law by making it too difficult for listeners to cancel their subscriptions. The ruling came from a lawsuit filed last year by New York’s attorney general, who accused the company of subjecting canceling subscribers to a “burdensome endurance contest” that required phone conversations with a live agent and extended time spent on hold.
PIRACY AT SCOTUS – Nearly five years after the major labels won a $1 billion music piracy verdict against Cox Communications, the U.S. Supreme Court signaled that it might jump into the case by asking the U.S. Department of Justice to weigh in.
This story was published as part of Billboard’s music technology newsletter ‘Machine Learnings.’
Sign up for ‘Machine Learnings,’ and Billboard’s other newsletters, here.
Let’s get the news out of the way: on Monday (Nov. 24) Drake initiated legal action against Universal Music Group — the parent company of his record label — and Spotify over allegations that the two companies conspired to artificially inflate the popularity of Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us.” This, he says, was done through a variety of allegedly illegal promotional methods, like UMG — which also is the parent company to Kendrick’s label — accepting a royalty reduction in exchange for boosting streams; payola via independent radio promotions; and paid but undisclosed influencer campaigns. (For their part, Universal called these claims “offensive and untrue.”)
Longtime readers of Machine Learnings know that most of the topics presented in Drake’s case are ones we’ve covered extensively in this newsletter. I don’t take the issues of streaming fraud and shady digital marketing tactics lightly, and if these allegations are true, it would be a bombshell that one of the world’s biggest artists called out the world’s largest music company for partaking in it. (And trust me, I’d be all over reporting that!) But while Drake’s allegations could still hold some merit, this particular court document seems to be backed up with questionable evidence and — it seems — some level of misunderstanding about the way music promotion works today.
So let’s break it down. Here are a few key quotes from Monday’s court document, with commentary.
“In his memo to staff reflecting on the highlights of 2021, the CEO of UMG, Lucian Grainge, remarked on it being ‘harder than ever for artists to break through the noise: sixty thousand songs are added to Spotify every day.’”
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Maybe I’m splitting hairs by pointing this out, but I find this to be a strange way to begin laying out these allegations. Why are they citing highlights from 2021 when we get updates every year about how many songs are added to Spotify on a daily basis? It would have been far more effective to start by including the 2023 stat: 120,000 songs are uploaded to Spotify each day, according to Luminate. Or, if they want to keep the quote from Grainge in, why not tack that current number on to the end?
Throughout this document, it seems like Drake’s team is missing key, up-to-date information on the ways songs are released and marketed today. This is surprising, given Drake is one of the most successful artists in the world and one who often makes savvy marketing and business decisions. One of those marketing tactics that immediately comes to mind is when Drake graced the cover of a ton of Spotify playlists during the release of his album Scorpion in 2018 to raise awareness, and streams, for the project. It was so over the top that Billboard reported at the time that some fans were calling for Spotify to provide refunds because they were seeing too much Drake.
“On information and belief, UMG charged Spotify licensing rates 30 percent lower than its usual licensing rates for “Not Like Us” in exchange for Spotify affirmatively recommending the Song to users who are searching for other unrelated songs and artists. Neither UMG nor Spotify disclosed that Spotify had received compensation of any kind in exchange for recommending the Song.”
Rather than some nefarious back room deal, this sounds like Drake’s lawyers are referring to Spotify’s Discovery Mode feature, which is used by a wide array of labels and artists and is practically never disclosed. According to an article from Spotify’s support team, artists who want a song to receive an additional algorithmic boost on the platform can opt in to Discovery Mode which “doesn’t require an upfront budget” and instead takes a “30% commission… to recording royalties generated from all streams of selected songs in Discovery Mode contexts.”
When Spotify debuted this feature in November 2020, it immediately drew controversy. In June 2021, Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Hank Johnson Jr. (D-GA) sent a letter to Spotify’s CEO/founder Daniel Ek voicing worries that the feature “may set in motion a ‘race to the bottom’ in which artists and labels feel compelled to accept lower royalties as a necessary way to break through an extremely crowded and competitive music environment.”
Again, in March 2022, Reps. Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY), Judy Chu (D-CA) and Tony Cardenas (D-CA) — co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus on Multicultural Media — expressed concerns that Discovery Mode “lack[ed] transparency” for both artists and consumers. The representatives then asked the company to publish “on a monthly basis the name of every track enrolled in the program” and the agreed-upon discounted royalty rate for each, calling Discovery Mode “a serious risk for musicians.”
That said, it’s not clear if “Not Like Us” was part of Spotify’s Discovery Mode program, and historically, Universal Music Group has not been known to use the feature for any of its frontline releases — including any Kendrick Lamar or Drake songs.
“UMG, directly or through Interscope, also 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… One individual unknown to Petitioner revealed publicly on a popular podcast that Mr. Kendrick Lamar Duckworth’s ‘label’ (i.e., Interscope) paid him via third parties to use ‘bots’ to achieve 30,000,000 streams on Spotify in the first days of the release of ‘Not Like Us’”
If this is true, this is streaming fraud and would be a serious offense. Just a few months ago, a man named Michael Anthony Smith was indicted by federal prosecutors on charges of wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy for allegedly using bots to boost the streams of his catalog and to help him siphon $10 million out of the royalty pool.
But the evidence here is sketchy. Drake’s lawyers admit that the “individual” who was allegedly solicited to artificially drive up Kendrick’s streams is “unknown to [Drake]” but that this anonymous person went on DJ Akademiks’ podcast to talk about this alleged scheme. DJ Akademiks is a podcaster who is known to be close with Drake, and he has played a significant role in backing up Drake during the beef earlier this year. Even if this ended up being true, which seems like a stretch, it feels quite biased.
“While historically payola has been thought of in terms of paying radio stations to play songs, in February 2020, the Federal Trade Commission released guidance stating that ‘by paying an influencer to pretend that their endorsement or review is untainted by a financial relationship, this is illegal payola.’ On information and belief, UMG employed a similar scheme by paying social media influencers to promote and endorse the Song and Video. For example, Petitioner understands that UMG paid the popular NFR Podcast — which has nearly 300,000 subscribers on YouTube and over 330,000 followers on X — to promote ‘Not Like Us’”
Drake’s team is citing a quote from February 2020 by the FTC that has been removed from the agency’s website. I do not know if that means it is no longer their current rule, or if there was another reason.
What I do know is that just a few months ago, I wrote a story on the topic of influencers receiving undisclosed payments to play songs in the background of TikTok videos. I went into the reporting believing, as Drake’s team seems to, that this was definitely against FTC guidelines, but the FTC told me that wasn’t necessarily the case.
“While we can’t comment on any particular example, that practice seems somewhat analogous to a product placement,” the FTC told me. “When there are songs playing in the backgrounds of videos, there are no objective claims made about the songs. The video creator may be communicating implicitly that they like the song, but viewers can judge the song themselves when they listen to it playing in the video. For these reasons, it may not be necessary for a video to disclose that the content creator was compensated for using a particular song in the background in the video.”
Some of the examples from NFR that Drake cites here are not exactly the same type of pay-to-play content I researched for my story, but I could see these examples being acceptable by the FTC based on what they told me. One example of UMG’s alleged influencer payola cited by Drake’s lawyers was a tweet by NFR that says that Kendrick Lamar’s new music video was released. Another was NFR saying “Kids rapping Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ word for word at a birthday party.” Another: “Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ becomes the FASTEST rap song to reach 300M Spotify streams.”
All three of these examples are objective statements about one of the biggest artists in the world. Referring back to the statement I got from the FTC, “There are no objective claims made about the songs…viewers can judge the songs themselves.” (I say all this while also acknowledging that some of the other examples listed might be in more of a gray area with the FTC).
The practice of paying influencers to post about new songs is nothing new, and one major label marketer told me he estimated “75% of popular songs on TikTok started with a creator marketing campaign.” According to digital marketing experts, influencer campaigns have been the go-to marketing strategy at every major label since TikTok took off in 2020. With that in mind, it is hard for me to imagine that Drake’s team has never run a similar campaign for any of his own viral hits, which would undermine his entire argument.
“Streaming and licensing is a zero-sum game. Every time a song ‘breaks through,’ it means another artist does not. UMG’s choice to saturate the music market with ‘Not Like Us’ comes at the expense of its other artists, like Drake. As Drake is Petitioner’s sole owner, and Petitioner owns the copyright to Drake’s entire catalogue, Petitioner suffered economic harm as a result of UMG’s scheme.”
I find this to be a strange claim — that if Kendrick’s song streams well it directly takes away from Drake or other artists. It feels like a stretch to blame Kendrick for other artists not succeeding with their songs at the same time. I imagine Drake faced more “economic harm” from the reputational damage this song did to him (by calling him a “pedophile”) than it did by being a “zero-sum” streaming game. Plus, with UMG the parent company distributing both artists — and thus making money from their success — it makes no business sense for them to be deliberately harming his career and prospects.
This zero-sum claim seems to be what he’s getting at in his second legal filing, released Tuesday (Nov. 26). In it, he claims UMG should have stopped Kendrick from releasing a song with “false” claims that defamed his character.
“UMG … could have refused to release or distribute the song or required the offending material to be edited and/or removed,” Drake’s lawyers write in the court document. “But UMG chose to do the opposite. UMG designed, financed and then executed a plan to turn ‘Not Like Us’ into a viral mega-hit with the intent of using the spectacle of harm to Drake and his businesses to drive consumer hysteria and, of course, massive revenues. That plan succeeded, likely beyond UMG’s wildest expectations.”
By saying this, Drake is essentially advocating for labels to censor their artists, which is a very slippery slope — I’d wager most people would find it troublesome if a billion-dollar corporation started preemptively censoring art. Not to mention, Drake has levied plenty of his own unsubstantiated claims against Kendrick this year, most notably on also-UMG-released diss track “Family Matters.”
The hip-hop industry has fought for years to remind the judicial system in the U.S. that not everything a rapper says in a song is a cold hard fact, and it should not be used as evidence against a rapper in a criminal sense. As top music attorney Dina Lapolt once put it to Variety, “[these] attempts to put all rap lyrics into the categories of historical fact and fiction [are] failing to understand that hip-hop, like most art, is more complex than that… lyrics are not to be taken literally.”
Drake has launched a second bombshell legal action against Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” accusing the music giant of defamation and claiming it could have halted the release of a song “falsely accusing him of being a sex offender.”
A day after filing an action in New York accusing UMG of illegally boosting Lamar’s track with payments to Spotify, Drake’s company leveled similar claims in Texas court regarding radio giant iHeartRadio. The new filing, filed late Monday and made public on Tuesday, claims UMG “funneled payments” to iHeart as part of a “pay-to-play scheme” to promote the song on radio.
But the filing also offers key new details about Drake’s grievances toward UMG, the label where he has spent his entire career. In it, he says UMG knew that Kendrick’s song “falsely” accused him of being a “certified pedophile” and “predator” but chose to release it anyway.
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“UMG … could have refused to release or distribute the song or required the offending material to be edited and/or removed,” Drake’s lawyers write. “But UMG chose to do the opposite. UMG designed, financed and then executed a plan to turn ‘Not Like Us’ into a viral mega-hit with the intent of using the spectacle of harm to Drake and his businesses to drive consumer hysteria and, of course, massive revenues. That plan succeeded, likely beyond UMG’s wildest expectations.”
Like the New York filing on Monday, the new petition isn’t quite a lawsuit. Instead, it’s so-called pre-action filing aimed taking depositions from key figures at UMG and iHeart in order to obtain more information that might support Drake’s accusations in a future lawsuit.
In seeking that information, Drake’s lawyers say they already have enough evidence to pursue a “claim for defamation” against UMG, but that they might also tack on claims of civil fraud and racketeering based on what they discover from the depositions.
UMG and iHeartRadio did not immediately return requests for comment on the new filing. Lamar is not named as a respondent in the filing and is not legally accused of any wrongdoing.
Universal Music Group responded to yesterday’s filing with a statement provided to Billboard. “The suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue,” the company said. “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.”
Like Monday’s bombshell petition, the new filing in Texas is another remarkable escalation in the high-profile beef between the two stars, which saw Drake and Lamar exchange stinging diss tracks over a period of months earlier this year. Such beefs happen frequently in the world of hip-hop, but few thought either side would file legal actions over the insults.
It also represents a deepening of the rift between Drake and UMG, where the star has spent his entire career — first through signing a deal with Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, which was distributed by Republic Records, then by signing directly to Republic. Lamar, too, has spent his entire career associated with UMG and is currently signed to a licensing deal with Interscope.
In Tuesday’s new petition, Drake essentially accused the music giant of using illegal means to unfairly prioritize one of its artists over the other.
“Before it approved the release of the song, UMG knew that the song itself, as well as its accompanying album art and music video, attacked the character of another one of UMG’s most prominent artists, Drake, by falsely accusing him of being a sex offender, engaging in pedophilic acts, harboring sex offenders and committing other criminal sexual acts,” his lawyers write.
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