Drake Drops UMG, Spotify Legal Action Over ‘Not Like Us’

Drake has withdrawn his lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) and Spotify after accusing the companies of colluding to discount streaming license rates for Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” in exchange for increased airplay.

In a filing in New York on Tuesday obtained by Rolling StoneDrake’s company Frozen Moments voluntarily withdrew its filings against UMG and Spotify, which included an “Order to Show Cause seeking pre-action disclosure and preservation of certain documents and communications” from UMG and “pre-action disclosure of certain documents and communications ” from Spotify.

Representatives for Drake, UMG and Spotify did not immediately respond to inquiries about the rapper’s latest filing.

Drake’s lawyers filed a pair of legal filings in November stating they intended to investigate whether UMG worked with Spotify and iHeartRadio to artificially boost the popularity of Lamar’s Drake-directed diss track. The filings also claimed on “information and belief” that bots and other forms of payola were used to inflate the song’s streams, and that Universal was complicit in “defamation” by endorsing a song that accused Drake of being a “certified pedophile.”

“Spotify has no financial incentive for users to stream Not like us over any of Drake’s tracks,” a spokesperson for the streaming service said following the allegations. Spotify filed a statement of opposition to Drake’s petition, saying it “should be dismissed.”

“Under cover of the far-fetched claim that this gives rise to a civil RICO claim, petitioner in this proceeding seeks to invoke the extraordinary remedy of pre-action discovery,” the opposition brief read. “On this basis, Petitioner seeks documents sufficient to show such an agreement and the financial benefits allegedly received. As set forth in the accompanying affidavit, the predicate of Petitioner’s entire request for discovery from Spotify is false: there is no such agreement.”