Spotify Defends Promotion of Nicki Minaj's 'Queen' Album

Spotify has broken its silence on Nicki Minaj's accusations regarding the company's treatment of her new album Queen. In a statement to Variety today (Aug. 21), a Spotify representative defended the platform's promotion of the project and claimed no ill will toward the "Chun-Li" rapper.

“Spotify supported Nicki Minaj with a Times Square billboard, a host of the largest playlists, New Music Friday and the new music release shelf,” the rep said. "Her song ‘Bed’ actually saw an increase based on the promotions put behind the campaign. The company continues to be big fans of Nicki."

The statement comes in response to Nicki's tweets on Sunday (Aug. 19) accusing the company of retaliating against her for debuting Queen on her Beats 1 radio show on Apple Music by retracting planned promotion on Spotify.

"Spotify said that Apple tweeted fans advising #Queen was up & therefore they had to teach me a lesson," she tweeted. "They took away my promotion they had promised for the 1st [couple] days b/c of this."

The accusation—which Minaj later described as "dry/sarcastic humor"—came amid a series of tweets responding to Queen landing at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, behind Travis Scott's Astroworld, an outcome she seemed to blame on unfair industry practices.

Among other claims, Nicki accused Scott of juicing his numbers by bundling album downloads with concert tickets and merchandise, although she, too, bundled physical copies of her new project with tickets to her upcoming NickiHndrxx Tour with Future and 6ix9ine.

Queen in its first week moved 185,000 equivalent album units, including 78,000 in traditional album sales. Astroworld tallied 205,000 equivalent album units in its second week, including 78,000 in traditional sales, retaining the No. 1 spot in its second week on the market. Billboard has not yet responded to Minaj's tweets.

Check out her claims on Twitter in the gallery below.

See Nicki Minaj Believes Kylie Jenner Helped Keep 'Astroworld' Atop the Billboard 200 Chart