“Drake accuses Universal Music Group and Spotify of unfairly promoting Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us'”: https://t.ly/wi2pY

“Drake Files Second Action Against UMG, Alleging Defamation Over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘False’ Song”: https://t.ly/32_oO

Who knows what the truth is.

But one thing is for sure, the credibility of Universal and Spotify is in question. In a world where Ticketmaster is more hated than the cable industry. If you’re big in the world today, you’re automatically guilty. This is the ethos of the individuals oppressed online. If you’re defending the corporation, if you’re taking the side of the man, you’re excoriated.

Whatever the truth is here, this is the result of consolidation. Drake and Kendrick Lamar are both Universal artists. Is there an inherent conflict? I’m not saying it’s illegal, it’s not, but I am saying going forward it will be an issue…does the label have my back, or someone else’s?

And let’s be clear, Drake’s image has taken an irreversible hit.

As for a discount deal with Spotify… That seems totally plausible. This is what labels did with physical retail to move product. So did Universal accept a lesser payment for “Not Like Us”? There’s a long history of Spotify paying less in return for promotion. 

Let the games begin.

We have innumerable artists saying that Spotify doesn’t pay enough, while the big kahunas are accepting less for dominance?

As for employing bots… I truly doubt that Spotify, et al, agreed to this. This is a smoking gun, and there’s no upside. But Universal doing anything it can to drive traffic? Once again, that’s the history of music promotion.

So whatever happens here, Universal loses. As has Drake. He will never recover from this rap battle. Did Universal have his back? It certainly didn’t look like it. If they weren’t parts of the same conglomerate would another label have fought for Drake harder against Kendrick? One would think so.

And then there’s the dirty little secret that a whole bunch of people just don’t care about this rap battle. In a world where country music is ascendant, where you don’t have to listen to anything you don’t want to, how many people have actually paid attention to the music from last spring that is at the center of this conflagration?

This is a lesson from the election. Perception may be very different from reality. The entire music business was and is focused on this rap battle. But in reality is it a tempest in a teapot? And let’s be clear…in a world where there’s war in the Middle East and in Ukraine, where grocery prices are sky high, do we really care about a pissing match between two rich rappers?

Fans are as diehard as ever. But how wide is that fandom?

And today people are skeptical of celebrities. In truth, many social media influencers have a wider reach than hit musicians. Which is something mainstream media and the industry at large refuse to acknowledge, they’d rather bury their heads in the sand and believe it’s the same as it ever was.

The election proved that big time media was out of touch. Trump bad, Kamala good. Then why did Trump win in the end? Never have big artists reached fewer people. But the industry has not adjusted for this. Instead of major labels trying to gain market share by signing ever more acts in ever more genres, they’re signing very few acts in very few genres and trying for moonshots. But a moonshot in the MTV era was very different from today. Back then you were literally known around the world. Today you can be a Spotify Top Ten artist and most of the public cannot name a single song of yours.

In an era of transparency, the music business continues to be opaque. As for Spotify…it actually publishes the streams, available to everybody, right in the desktop app. But since Spotify is the biggest streamer with the most listeners it must be guilty.

What Drake wants is sunlight, whatever the truth might be. But historically the industry has done everything to avoid this, settling all lawsuits, avoiding precedent.

But it used to be that acts were afraid of labels. But with so much money in touring, this is no longer the case. Lawsuits are more prevalent.

Questlove said in the wake of the  Kendrick/Drake rap battle that “Hip-hop is truly dead.”

But it might just be the beginning of transparency.