Drake has officially withdrawn his lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) and Spotify.
UPROXX reported that Drake had voluntarily dropped his legal battle against the two music organizations. The lawsuit was based on claims that UMG and Spotify used an unethical practice known as "payola" to inflate the numbers of Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us," a diss track intended for Drake.
According to documents from the New York Supreme Court, the "Hotline Bling" rapper's legal team decided to conclude the pre-action lawsuit.
"Please take further notice that petitioner hereby voluntarily discontinues," the file shared.
"This special proceeding as to all respondents without costs to any party. Plaintiffs met and conferred with respondents on January 14, 2025, regarding this filing."
The document added that Spotify and UMG have no objections to the lawsuit's discontinuation.
UMG has since released a statement abut the lawsuit.
"Not only are these claims untrue, but the notion that we would seek to harm the reputation of any artist — let alone Drake — is illogical. We have invested massively in his music and our employees around the world have worked tirelessly for many years to help him achieve historic commercial and personal financial success," they said via Music Business Worldwide.
Throughout his career, Drake has intentionally and successfully used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to engage in conventionally outrageous back-and-forth 'rap battles' to express his feelings about other artists. He now seeks to weaponize the legal process to silence an artist's creative expression and to seek damages from UMG for distributing that artist's music. We have not and do not engage in defamation — against any individual. At the same time, we will vigorously defend this litigation to protect our people and our reputation, as well as any artist who might directly or indirectly become a frivolous litigation target for having done nothing more that write a song," the statement concluded.
Drake filed a pre-action lawsuit on November 25, 2024, alleging that the streaming figures for "Not Like Us" were "inflated" across the music charts.
In May 2024, Lamar's track reigned supreme at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 after earning 70.9 million streams and approximately 15,000 sold-out copies.
In December 2024, Spotify rejected the allegations, denying any involvement in manipulating the song's numbers. However, this response prompted Drake's legal team to double down their efforts in the lawsuit against Spotify, accusing the platform of trying to "distance" itself from the issue.
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