Drake has withdrawn his legal action against Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG) over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track Not Like Us.
The Canadian rapper filed a legal complaint against the streaming service and record label in November in which he accused them of conspiring to artificially inflate the streaming figures for the song, in which Lamar accuses him of paedophilia.
However, on Tuesday, lawyers for Drake and his Frozen Moments company voluntarily withdrew the pre-action filing, effectively ending the case.
In the documents, which were filed in New York, the lawyers revealed the One Dance rapper met with representatives of Spotify and UMG on Tuesday to discuss his legal action.
According to Variety, Spotify reps, who had filed an opposition to his complaint in December, had no objection to the case being withdrawn. UMG bosses, who hadn’t filed an opposition, reserved their position.
In his original petition, Drake’s lawyers accused UMG – which distributes both his and Lamar’s music – of launching a scheme “to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves” with Not Like Us by using “bots and pay-to-play agreements” to make the diss track seem more popular than it really was.
UMG reps denied the allegations at the time, calling them “offensive and untrue”. Spotify’s legal team filed an opposition in December and a spokesperson insisted, “Spotify has no economic incentive for users to stream Not Like Us over any of Drake’s tracks.”
Drake’s motion was not a lawsuit but a request for “pre-action discovery”.
The 38-year-old also filed a motion containing similar allegations against UMG and radio network iHeartRadio in November. That case is reportedly still active.
Not Like Us was the most successful song in the series of diss tracks Drake and Kendrick released against each other last year. Drake denied the incendiary allegations in his response song, The Heart Part 6.
