The team of lawyers behind the court battle Drake waged with Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG) is not backing down from requests for information proving the companies conspired against the artist.
As previously reported by REVOLT, the Nothing Was the Same rapper filed a complaint alleging the streamer and his label participated in an illegal scheme that reduced licensing fees, and disproportionately recommended Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” to users amid their summer volley of diss records.
The streamer’s legal team said that allegations the company colluded with UMG to artificially boost Lamar’s viral anthem were false. “The predicate of petitioner’s entire request for discovery from Spotify is false,” they said. “Spotify and UMG have never had any such arrangement.” Its legal representatives doubled down on their stance when they stated that requests for data were “far-fetched” and “speculative.”
However, Drake's team of Willkie Farr & Gallagher lawyers responded to the denial in a statement released to Billboard on Friday (Dec. 20). The law firm said, “It is not surprising that Spotify is trying to distance themselves from UMG’s allegedly manipulative practices to artificially inflate streaming numbers on behalf of one of its other artists. If Spotify and UMG have nothing to hide, then they should be perfectly fine complying with this basic discovery request.”
The “pre-action” mining for proof to support the 6 God’s argument was described as an effort “to bypass the normal pleading requirements … and obtain by way of pre-action discovery that which it would only be entitled to seek were it to survive a motion to dismiss,” by Spotify’s lawyers. “This subversion of the normal judicial process should be rejected,” added its legal team.
UMG responded to Drake’s November filing with a statement that read, in part, any “suggestion that [they] 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.”
However, they were named in a second filing the next day. This time they, alongside iHeartRadio, stood accused of defamation. Drake argued that his label was aware Lamar had alluded to him and his OVO crew members as pedophiles, and that the media company accepted payments to push the record.