Russ Accuses Major Labels Of Holding Spotify “Hostage”

The Drake petition against Universal Music Group and Spotify for allegedly boosting Kendrick Lamar‘s “Not Like Us” streams artificially prompted a lot of heavy debate around the streaming world, fandom, and the music industry as a whole, especially within hip-hop. But these conversations always existed within and beyond the culture, albeit to less fanfare. One rapper who’s always criticized the system the art form operates within is Russ, who recently took to Twitter with an interesting theory. According to his assessment, streaming services like Spotify are also victims of major label exploitation and not the partner in crime that many would assume.

“Disclaimer : I love Spotify and am grateful for the platform that has connected my music with millions of fans worldwide and this isn’t about any label or artist in particular, moreso just the system,” Russ began his remarks. “Spotify knows who’s faking their streams lol however, they’re not gonna ever (imo) publicly expose any major labels due to potential consequences. Major labels could retaliate by pulling their top artists music from Spotify. That would obviously diminish Spotify’s value and attractiveness to subscribers.

“Spotify just punishes them behind the scenes (removes fake streams and removes the song from playlists) because they prioritize (makes sense) maintaining their access to major label content over publicly confronting stream manipulation, which essentially makes them a “hostage” of the major labels,” Russ continued. “Basically Spotify publicly outing major labels is a lose lose for everyone involved.” “I know everyone loves to hate rich companies or rich anything. But tbh in this situation Spotify is lowkey the victim bein held hostage by major labels.” However, we doubt that he excused fake streams here, as it’s something that he rallied against in the past.

Meanwhile, today (Friday, December 20), a Houston court anticipated a hearing on the petition from Drake and presumably determine the next steps… But that didn’t work out. Spotify denied any and all accusations that the 6ix God and his team levied against them, as did UMG. Maybe this goes somewhere or it dies before it can live. But either way, artists like Russ know that the dynamic at play often comes in more complex ways.