When Kendrick Lamar released Not Like Us last spring, it immediately became a viral sensation. The diss track aimed at Drake was the culmination of an ongoing back-and-forth between the two artists. And though Lamar’s track Euphoria was arguably better, Not Like Us quickly became the song of the summer and, in the process, set a seemingly endless number of streaming records.
There’s not enough room to list all of the song’s accolades, but Not Like Us is the fastest rap song to reach 100 million and 700 million streams on Spotify. Put simply, the song had legit staying power and became a mainstay on the radio, at parties, and at sporting events. The song was also nominated for five Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year.
With that said, now comes another twist in a saga that many thought was over, and it oddly enough involves Apple. Drake submitted not one but two pre-action filings this week against Universal Music Group (UMG) and iHeartRadio. The claims in each are similar insofar that Drake believes the popularity of Not Like Us wasn’t organic. Specifically, Drake claims that UMG artificially inflated the song’s performance on the charts via “funneled payments” to iHeartRadio. The allegations also detail how both parties promoted the song even though it was replete with defamatory statements against him.
Drake’s allegations against Spotify and Apple
Drake also alleges that UMG offered Spotify a cheaper licensing rate in exchange for promoting the song to users. The filing claims that the song was recommended even when users searched for otherwise unrelated artists and music. Drake also alleges that UMB used bots to “artificially inflate the spread of Not Like Us and deceive consumers into believing the song was more popular than it was in reality.”
So how does this tie back to Apple? Well, the allegation includes a section that Apple took payments to help underhandedly promote the song on Siri:
UMG appears to have used similar tactics with other streaming services. On information and belief, UMG paid, or approved payments to, Apple Inc. to have its voice-activated digital assistant “Siri” purposely misdirect users to “Not Like Us.”* Online sources reported that when users asked Siri to play the album “Certified Loverboy” by recording artist Aubrey Drake Graham d/b/a Drake, Siri instead played “Not Like Us.”
Without knowing any particulars, this seems like a stretch, to say the least. Apple, for starters, doesn’t seem like it’d be inclined to take any amount of payment in exchange for delivering a subpar user experience on Siri.
It’s worth noting that the aforementioned filings are not actual lawsuits. Rather, a pre-action filing refers to the process of gathering documentation and presenting it to a court before a lawsuit.
One of the filings reads in part:
UMG … could have refused to release or distribute the song or required the offending material to be edited and/or removed. But UMG chose to do the opposite. UMG designed, financed and then executed a plan to turn ‘Not Like Us’ into a viral mega-hit with the intent of using the spectacle of harm to Drake and his businesses to drive consumer hysteria and, of course, massive revenues. That plan succeeded, likely beyond UMG’s wildest expectations.
Complicating matters, and perhaps a fact that is fueling Drake’s actions here, is that Drake works under Universal Music Group. It remains to be seen what happens with this saga, but in the interim, the fan reaction to Drake’s legal maneuvers has been particularly negative.
