This week on the show, I looked back on the year in music with my panelists Luxxury and Diallo (hosts of the One Song podcast), and had a strange realization about 2024: a lot of what you need to know about how the music industry is changing can be explained by — wait for it — DRAKE. 

I know. Makes me feel weird, too. I think Kendrick won the rap battle. Drake is not my favorite rapper or celebrity by a long shot. And yet.

Let’s start with a lawsuit Drake filed against Universal Music Group, over a months-long rap battle with Kendrick Lamar. After more than a dozen back-and-forth diss tracks, Kendrick released a song that seemed to end the fight for good: the mega-hit “Not Like Us,” which had children and adults alike chanting “certified pedophile” all summer long. But after that song topped the charts this year, Drake responded with a court filing against Universal Records over its promotion of “Not Like Us.” And, sore loser memes aside, the legal action speaks to a reality in the industry: all the ways our favorite music algorithms are gamed, potentially by the highest bidder. 

Drake has accused Universal Records and Spotify of using bots, payola, and other methods to make “Not Like Us” a hit. He claims that the label cut its royalty rates (the rate they’re paid every time the song is streamed) by 30% in return for Spotify recommending the song more to streamers. Drake also alleges that bots were created to constantly stream “Not Like Us” and make it a hit. And in another filing, he accused Universal Music Group of paying iHeart Radio for spins, as well.

What Drake is getting at is something my panelists spoke about at length in this week’s episode: the algorithms that feed us music every day aren’t blind or altruistic, and they can be manipulated a lot, by all kinds of interests. In fact, artists can now opt-in – publicly — to better promotion in Spotify’s playlist if they agree to accept lower compensation rates. My panelists and I went so far as to call all of this “payola”: the old practice of labels paying off radio stations to get their songs played. It’s something many thought died with the ’50s, but Drake is making the case it’s still happening now. And that’s the biggest music story in my world: finding out who controls the algorithms that dictate what I hear. 

The second big one for me this year involved watching something that was hyped to death in 2023 peter out in 2024. It involves Drake as well: Flash black to April 2023, when the conversation around AI and music had reached a fever pitch after a song called “Heart On My Sleeve” hit the internet. It was, ostensibly, a Drake and The Weeknd collaboration, and it sounded great. Club ready. But it wasn’t actually a Drake and The Weeknd song. It was all made by AI. 

Coverage was feverish. Many speculated that this might mark the end of the music industry itself. If two of the biggest pop stars on the planet could be copied this easily, and in this catchy of a manner, what would that mean for any musicians trying to make a living in an economy in which AI could do it just as well, if not better, an infinite number of times, in perpetuity? 

But 2024 came and went, and Drake showed how AI and its role in music’s future may have been overstated. In the back-and-forth between Kendrick and Drake this year, a song called “BBL Drizzy” became a minor internet hit. “BBL Drizzy” mocks Drake over allegations he had a Brazilian Butt Lift. (I know — he can’t catch a break). Creator and comedian Will Hatcher made the song using AI to create the vocals and produce the backing track, but it really took off when super-producer Metro Boomin (once a Drake friend and now a Drake foe) sampled the song for an even catchier version of the same name. But what ultimately happened to “BBL Drizzy” says a lot about what’s happening with AI music in general: It’s getting sued into oblivion.

According to CNN, a *group* of major record labels are suing two AI startups involved with the song — Suno and Uncharted Labs — for training their AI models with music that wasn’t licensed for that kind of use. And ironically enough, Drake himself almost got sued over AI this year, as well. One of his many diss tracks against Kendrick this spring and summer included AI-generated voices of both Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg. After a cease-and-desist order from Tupac’s estate, Drake took the track down. It all suggests that we may not hear a lot of AI music for some time, because of a chilling effect caused by such litigation. And here, again, one could see it all shake out by watching Drake over the last year. 

The funniest part of this entire story is that even in the midst of all this computer-generated content, some lyrics were still pure. The AI Drake diss that was almost a hit, “BBL Drizzy,” didn’t use AI to create its lyrics — just the singing and the beat itself. Song creator Will Thatcher told Billboard, “There’s no way AI could write lyrics like ‘I’m thicker than a Snicker and I got the best BBL in history.”

Speaking of music and how AI just can’t do what humans do, a lot of very, very smart DJs and music curators at KCRW are helping push back against the algo — and maybe even fixing yours — with some seriously good, delightfully subjective Best Of 2024 music lists (and playlists!). It’s impressive, y’all. Trust me. You can check it all out here and on Instagram at @kcrwmusic. 

Which brings me to my last point — a request: This week, I had the honor and privilege of participating in KCRW’s pledge drive LIVE on the air with my friend and colleague Novena Carmel during her show Morning Becomes Eclectic. Gonna tell you the same thing here that I said on the air: KCRW needs your support. It’s always free, for whoever wants it, but it still costs money to make. Your dollars keep the station alive, which keeps ~this show and newsletter~ going as well. I’m a big believer in public media, especially in this era of media fragmentation, destabilization, and monetization. Let’s keep a good thing going. Support KCRW and our work by giving here. 

Alright, enjoy your weekends, and reply to this email to lemme know what you listened to the most this year. I’m very curious!

-Sam