It's been a crazy, insane, totally unhinged past 72 hours. Between the Kendrick album coming out, we got the "squabble up" video, too. I just got out my review, which was just massively long, big undertaking.

Oh, look, an entire lawsuit. Rather a verified petition coming from none other than Drake. Now, the lawsuit isn't against Kendrick Lamar, specifically. Rather, Drake and his Frozen Moments company are suing UMG, his record label, and Kendrick's record label, UMG, as well as Spotify. And we're going to go over the claims right here, right now.

The lawsuit here, before I get into it, has not been well received so far. Many people are taking to the internet to call Drake a Karen or somebody who is crying foul for no reason, or at the very least, being hypocritical on some level because Drake being signed for years to UMG as well and really being that huge flagship artist when it comes to commercial hip hop success. Chances are if Kendrick Lamar has received some behind the scenes industry push for his music, some inorganic plays, Drake has probably received the same treatment at some point as well. Regardless, though, let us get into the lawsuit.

And here we are. Here we go. We have the petition right in front of us. Let's take a look at it and find out what exactly all the hubbub is about. Why is Drake filing this petition?

Okay, nature of the dispute – In his memo to staff reflecting on 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." Yes, I believe I've talked about that at some point on YouTube or on social media. But yes, the major labels for a minute have been basically complaining that it's difficult to put their artists on in this very saturated age of music.

We also have Spotify being the world's most popular audio streaming subscription service. As of the end of the third quarter of 2024. Spotify boasted more than 640 million monthly active listeners, active users, and 252 million subscribers. Spotify pays music companies like UMG for the right to license songs so it can play them on its streaming and subscription platforms. That is true.

In 2023 alone, Spotify paid more than nine billion in royalties to music labels and producers. Hip hop is one of the most popular genres on Spotify, amounting to nearly a quarter of all streams on Spotify globally in 2023. We're essentially just laying out the facts and everything here, what essentially is going to allow Drake and his legal representation, the ability to paint the picture that they want to paint here.

Spotify and UMG have a long-standing symbiotic business relationship, which is the case with all of the major labels, frankly, and really the number one issue with how music streaming services are operating right now. You're friends with the middleman, and you have this ability to game the market along with the middleman because the amount of "stores" are so homogenized now. Prior, years ago, before radio stations were all bought up and music stores were plentiful and all over the place, it was difficult for labels all collectively have the same very specific control that they have over music streaming services now.

The influence that they have over music streaming services now, is really unparalleled because, again, there's not a lot of operators, there's not a lot of competition in town. You've only really got a few different platforms to work with and muscle into doing and pushing what you want them to do and push.

UMG is one of Spotify's earliest supporters. It entered into a multi-year global license agreement with Spotify in 2020. UMG and Spotify collaborate on strategic marketing campaigns and products, and in 2024 announced an expansion of their strategic partnership, through which Spotify will amplify music discovery and social interaction and enhance fan experiences across the platform for UMG's family of artists and songwriters. Based on UMG's financial reporting, Spotify paid UMG around 2.28 billion in 2023, which amounted to 19% of UMG's total revenues in 2023.

So we're making the case that UMG is essentially in on this game with Spotify to push certain artists, push certain songs, whatever it is UMG wants to be hype and get out there and turn a profit. But the thing is, again, Drake is a part of the UMG family. The thing about this petition is that I think there most likely will be at least some validity to it, a kernel of truth, because botting streams and inflating streams for a while has been this open music industry secret that everyone acknowledges this happening, be it artists, be it Spotify itself, putting out a language saying, Yeah, we're going to get tougher on botted streams. There's going to be bigger penalties, and so on and so forth.

And yet there's no big, giant, shining examples of this happening, at least not on the level of a Drake or a Kendrick. And if it is happening on that level, and it is being pointed out, certainly nothing's being done about it. What Drake is doing here, whether it's well-intentioned or not, does have serious implications for the future of the music industry.

Streaming is essential to UMG's current bottom line and its future business strategy in a report related to the third quarter of 2024. UMG noted a nearly 29% year-over-year decrease in downloads and other digital revenue because of the continued format shift towards streaming. That is true. UMG's long-term strategy relies on accelerating the growth and monetization from streaming and streaming subscriptions. That makes sense. Streaming is pretty much the new way of things.

In 2024, UMG did not rely on chance or even ordinary business practices to "break through the noise" on Spotify and likely other platforms. It instead 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. Okay, everything happening up until this point, everything Drake's legal is trying to get across is like, here's the context. This is the context.

Okay. Talks about the license, exclusive license on information in belief, UMG charged Spotify licensing rates 30% 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 songs and artists, so on and so forth. And also, again, it's not like Drake's music doesn't get shoved down people's freaking throats on Spotify when he has a new release out, when he has a new record out. But I'm digressing here. The point that I want to make here is that this is not the full context. To act as if not like us was just released out of the blue for no reason with not even any awareness of its incoming release.

I mean, it was a surprise diss track. It was an extra one. It was another one that I think a lot of people didn't see coming necessarily. But for anybody who is watching this video, you're probably screaming right now thinking like, 'Wait, wasn't the biggest rap beef of the past several decades occurring in the midst of this song?' I mean, I suppose it's not out of the realm of possibility that UMG did something to incentivize Spotify to prominently display the song and make it more likely that people would stumble across it. But like, portraying the release of the song in this way is a lie.

If Kendrick released a track, really any track in the midst of this, very heated beef with Drake, which was covered across the Internet, drove so much interest and so much traffic. Some of the most popular videos and well-trafficked videos I've put out in the past year are about this beef. Nobody needed to be incentivized to be like, 'Oh, yeah, the Kendrick Drake beef. Maybe I'll check that out. Oh, Oh, the Kendrick, Drake beef? What is that? Is that a type of steak? Is that...' This petition acting as if the release of the song had no context and that there would have been no interest organically in listening to it is preposterous.

We can't just simply paint this as a situation where, I don't know what, Kendrick is some lowly obscure indie artist who nobody's ever heard of, and UMG is taking a chance on him. And so as a result, he's just going to drop his song out of the blue, drop his record with no promotion, and UMG, instead of coming up with a PR campaign, they'd be like, 'Oh, yeah, don't worry about getting your stuff out there. We're just going to bot it.'

Again, as if there was no discourse or conversation or hype on the internet around the topic this song is related to. If this song wasn't pushed to people, if this song wasn't shoved in people's faces by Spotify, nobody would have wanted to hear that. A Drake diss song? Who wants to hear a Drake diss song? That's ridiculous. Who would want to listen to such a thing? You'd have to force me to listen to that. Come on, be for real.

Moving on to the next page. UMG nor Spotify disclosed that Spotify had received compensation of any kind in exchange for recommending the song. On information and belief, Spotify pays UMG licensing fees through wires or mails.

Okay, wait a second. Time out. While this agreement could have existed, and I don't think it's fair to smaller artists, there are labels and potentially bigger artists cutting these sorts of deals in order to get their music out there. These kinds of arrangements have been a thing. Even Spotify in the past is like, a tease toward the idea of like, yeah, we'll give artists the opportunity to have their music pushed a little further on the platform if you agree to take a smaller cut of streaming revenue. This is not really a new thing or an illegal thing per se. I'm sure maybe more nefarious stuff is going to come up later in the lawsuit. But this is a claim that, again, it sounds like at this point, unfortunately, typical music industry practice.

And also, again, most likely there are Drake records, loads of different mainstream artists who have seen similar benefits due to deals that their label on their behalf may have cut with Spotify in terms of pushing releases that they have on their roster out there. 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 to deceive customers into believing the song was more popular than it was in reality.

Bots are software programs designed to mimic human behavior, to appear, to be real, social media accounts, so on and so forth – they're just explaining what bots are. To achieve 30 million streams on Spotify in the first day of the release, "Not Like Us", with the goal of jumpstarting the song's spread and turning it into "a crazy hit" – what are you quoting? Jambisco Don (@JambiscoDon), Kendrick Lamar EXPOSED by DJ Akademiks. Okay, this is the source. This is the source over here. A social media user and DJ Akademiks. That's the source.

On information and belief, UMG hired other unknown parties to use bots to promote "Not Like Us" and also inflate the streams of the "Not Like Us" music video, which UMG first published on July 4th, 2024. UMG appears to have used similar tactics with other streaming services. On information and belief, UMG paid or approved payments to Apple to have its voice-activated digital assistant Siri purposefully misdirect users to "Not Like Us", which, yeah, there were some people who posted streams or, not streams, but videos online asking Siri to play something, and then it would jokingly redirect them to "Not Like Us", which could have been a purposeful thing, could have been a joke thing, could have been a behind the scenes, people screwing around. Either way, it's a weird glitch. It's a weird bias, but it may not have necessarily been nefarious. And what claim Drake's company has to fix this or take issue with this, I don't know.

Other online sources reported that when users asked Siri to play the album "Certified Loverboy", by recording artist, Aubrey Drake Graham, Siri instead played "Not Like Us". Well, I mean, it may have been a bit of a mistake with the fact that that was a really hot, popular song at the moment, and those lyrics do turn up in the song, which does contain those lyrics "certified pedophile", an allegation against Drake. Which again, notably this suit is not a defamation suit. But okay, yeah, we have news articles here confirming Siri playing Kendrick Lamar track.

UMG engaged in similar pay-to-play schemes to increase their airplay of not like us on the radio. A petitioner obtained information from a third party indicating that at least one UMG employee made payments to an independent radio promoter, which that's spelled wrong, that should have been fucking fixed, serving as an intermediary who had agreed to transfer those payments to certain radio stations and/or radio station employees. These radio stations subsequently played or caused to be played,"Not Like Us", without disclosing that they had been paid to do so. This practice is known as payola. It is prohibited by the Communications Act of 1934, and yet it continued wildly through the 2000s.

Drake is going back to upend unfortunate music industry practices that despite legal bills passed to prevent them, they still freaking happen, and has been the subject of regulatory scrutiny by a number of executive agencies. In 2006, the UMG, of course, was doing it. 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 their endorsement or review is untainted by a financial relationship, this is a legal payola.

On information and belief, UMG employed a similar scheme by paying social media influencers to promote and endorse the song in video. For example, okay, for example, petitioner understands that UMG paid the popular NFR podcast, which has nearly 300,000 subscribers on YouTube, the NFR boys, and over 330,000 followers on X to promote "Not Like Us", and its video without disclosing the payment as a part of its deal with UMG.

In a sea-change of UMG's internal policy, UMG removed the song's copyright restrictions on YouTube and Twitch, thereby whitelisting the song for the first time in UMG history, while further incentivizing influencers to spread the song. Artists and labels all the time, or at least it's happened quite a few times, they will whitelist a song in order for people who do reactions to react to it without their videos being demonetized.

I mean, you could argue that this is the first time UMG has done this, but this is a thing that's been done and it's not illegal. And if there is some endorsement or payola going on here? What's the amount of money that's being exchanged here? What evidence do you have of money changing hands? And that's not to cast total doubt because look, these label, these industry offers of, 'Hey, we'll pay you to react to the song and do this and that.' They happen. I get those fucking emails. I mean, I always turn them down, but they exist. They're there.

However, I would have a hard time believing with all of the fervor and all of the hype and all of the discussion around "Not Like Us" that UMG would be like, 'Please, NFR podcast. This "Not Like Us" track, nobody's talking about it. It's It's totally obscure. No one's even aware it's out. Can you please let the public know that "Not Like Us" has been released to the internet? If you don't, I fear no one will listen to it. No one will know that Aubrey Graham is a PDF file downloaded.'

Like, what? What reality is this petition living in? I mean, again, it's not out of the realm of possibility because I do think labels paying influencers to react to tracks, to comment on tracks, it is a thing. It's just funny, this insinuation that if not for this YouTuber with 300,000 subscribers, who would even know about this track? I don't know. Maybe the tens of millions of Kendrick Lamar fans across the planet, maybe they would know about it.

I guess we have a little tweet here that Interscope reposted, Kendrick Lamar is not like us because of the fastest rap song to reach 300 million Spotify streams. Took only 35 days. And of course, yes, allegedly, a fraction of those streams are fake. Even if that 30 million number in the first 24 hours was totally fake, the rest of them, are the rest of them botted too? Are they all botted?

To date, "Not Like Us" has almost 900 million streams on Spotify and holds the record for the biggest single day streams of a hip hop song and the most streamed diss track in Spotify history. "Not Like Us" spent 27 weeks on Spotify's City Chart and for a city chart for New York City, which ranks the weekly streaming popularity of songs by users in New York, New York. Within its initial release, "Not Like Us" broke the record for the most streamed song in a seven-day period with 96 million streams.

Man, Drake's company is just singing Kendrick's praises over here. And again, no consideration, no possibility that people are listening to this song because they like it, or even just straight out of hatred for Drake. I mean, it's funny that Drake fans will push the narrative. Like, yeah, people only like this song because they hate Drake. Everyone's a Drake hater. Everyone listens the song as an op. That's the only reason people like the track. But even the suit doesn't even really acknowledge a reality in which people may just enjoy the song. They may just like it, or they may just dislike Drake. No, it just all has to be fake and shoved down our throats.

UMG schemed to artificially inflate the popularity of "Not Like Us" were motivated, at least in part by the desire of executives at Interscope to maximize their own profits. UMG executives have an annual incentive program pursuant to which they are rewarded for meeting and surpassing sales and profits projections, among other metrics. The incentives are largely based on the specific UMG division rather than the performative UMG more generally.

Okay, again, even if this is true, in most cases, Drake's music would most likely apply. Are we going to sit here and dilute ourselves into believing that all of Drake's fame is totally organic? It's not pushed by or supported by the industry in any way whatsoever? Like, Drake is just this independent artist who has no promo arm whatsoever. There's no interest in record labels and streaming services, like getting a certain amount of streams, pushing a certain amount of sales when a Drake record hits, even one is mediocre as, honestly, never mind. There's no incentive. There's no wish for Drake to see commercial success when he drops a record. Of course there is.

So any incentives that there would be for the label to be like, 'Oh, well, this album, it's got to hit a certain amount of streams. It's got to hit a certain amount of sales or else this or that, or we're not going to hit this like a profit goal', and so on and so forth. That applies just as much to Drake as it would to Kendrick as it would to any other major UMG artist. Let's also broaden this out a little bit because what's being claimed here doesn't merely just apply to one guy or two guys. It applies to many different music acts across the mainstream.

Petitioner has received information that UMG has been taking steps in an apparent effort to conceal its schemes, including but not limited to, by terminating employees associated with or perceived as having loyalty to Drake. Indeed, UMG has demonstrated that it has no interest in taking responsibility for its misconduct. Over the past several months, Drake has repeatedly sought to engage UMG in discussions to resolve the ongoing harm he has suffered as a result of UMG's actions. UMG refused to engage in negotiations and insisted that UMG is not responsible for its own actions.

Instead, UMG has pointed the finger at Mr. Duckworth insisted that Drake should initiate legal action against Mr. Duckworth instead, and even threatened to bring its own legal claims against Mr. Duckworth. If Drake were to pursue claims against UMG, whoa, that's some odd inside baseball. Drake is not going the path of least resistance, I guess.

Streaming and licensing is a zero-sum game every time a song breaks through. It means another artist does not, which I mean, okay, again, does Drake not count? Does Drake not count? Are we really arguing at this point that "Not Like Us" being popular, is Kendrick taking shine away from the humble, underground, obscure rappers and artists out there who nobody's heard of before, like Drake?

As far as I'm concerned with the UMG, both Kendrick and Drake are taking up-time, promotional muscle, and a bunch of other stuff that, yeah, sure, other artists could be eating up that time. Other artists who could use the money, could use the exposure, could use the career boost. I mean, again, this applies to both of you guys. As much as I enjoy Kendrick's music. As Drake is the petitioner's sole owner, and petitioner owns the copyright of Drake's entire catalog, petitioner suffered economic harm as a result of UMG's scheme.

And it's also being filed as like a RICO thing. So it's not even just a regular, normal petition or suit, be it fraud or claiming damages or something like that. Drake is going full RICO. This is organized. You guys are colluding over here illegally, which frankly is crazy.

Petitioner has a viable cause of action for Civil RICO with predicate acts of wire fraud, mail fraud, and/or bribery for UMG's payments to unknown third parties in the form of reduced licensing fees to Spotify. However, petitioner requires additional information in order to frame this complaint and satisfy the heightened rule, pleading standard applicable to complaints sounding in fraud. Specifically, petitioner requires information about the method by which the third parties were paid in order to determine which underlying predicate acts to plea and requires information about which benefits were conferred upon UMG in exchange for the payments.

Additionally, petitioner lacks sufficient information to identify the third parties who acted in conspiracy with UMG. So we're kind of pushing in a RICO direction. If this action does move forward, presumably, there would be some mutual process of discovery. It's like an inference of collusion, and there would be exchanges of emails, legal documentation, so on and so forth. In the midst of that, there would be some revelation or uncovering of supposed truths, the argument that Drake and his company is making over here.

Now, the thing is, in the process of discovery or up to the point at which some legal discovery process would happen, a lot of parties end up settling something, or we'll find a way to come to an agreement because they would like to avoid the potential of anything coming to light. Because if this suit does actually go to court, a lot of things would be ripped out of the closet, not only in terms of Kendrick and Drake, but probably numerous, numerous, numerous artists across the music industry.

If there is some greater scheme of botting and paying Spotify to push stuff and so on and so forth, it would all be exposed. It would all be brought into the light, which despite, Drake, obviously being in his feelings and being a whiny baby and taking this whole thing way too freaking personally, it would actually be a really great net positive to come out of this situation if, in fact, this suit does go that far.

Now, I think the likelihood of it going that far might be difficult. A judge might throw it out. UMG might find some way to settle. Drake might realize that he's bit off a bit more than he could chew, and he'll change his mind. Either of those things could happen. Even if Drake is right, even if what Drake is saying here, he has a point.

At the end of the day, he most likely has seen at least some of the benefit of a similar push, a similar behind-the-scenes promotion in order to make his music as popular as it is. And all that would result in is some mutually assured destruction between him and between Kendrick and between UMG.

Things wrapping up toward the end here, but for the most part, that is pretty much this petition, all of its major claims. So a pretty big, pretty big dump, pretty big bomb dropping over here. Pretty big claim on Drake's part. And look, again, I understand how optically this looks for Drake right now. But truth be told, again, the botting thing has been an open secret in the industry for quite a while now. There most likely is some validity to the claims Drake is making right here.

And if UMG is to fold under the threat of these claims because they're afraid of having to expose what would come out into the light if Drake pushed this all the way into court, what exactly would Drake be owed in the midst of all of this? Would it be some money? Would it be a sorry? Would the label have to post a video of them beating up Kendrick Lamar like, 'Oh, you're a bad boy?'

In the midst of me shooting this video, a second Drake legal hissy fit has hit UMG. Yes, Drake has put down another legal action where he is taking UMG to task, not for the botting, not for the artificial inflation of "Not Like Us", but defamation, which is something that I may get into the ethos of in another video, but to put it short and bluntly to top this particular piece of content off – bro, you entered a rap beef. You knew hatred and mud were going to be slung in both directions, and you involved yourself anyway.

Let me know what you guys think about all this. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano. Lawsuit. Aubrey. Forever.