IF you are a K-pop fan who relies on Spotify for your daily music fix, you might have woken up on March 1 to the realization that most of the songs you usually listened to were gone from the streaming platform.
Among the artists affected were IU, Jessi, HyunA, CL, Sunmi, Hyolyn, Younha, Epik High, Seventeen, Nu’est, Astro, Mamamoo, Gfriend, Pentagon, Monsta X, SF9, The Boyz, Loona, 4Minute, Vixx, Infinite, Dreamcatcher, Momoland, Zico, Block B, Beast, WJSN, BTOB, Golden Child, Victon, Lovelyz, Oneus, Kard, CNBLUE, DIA and many more.
The streaming platform has said it is trying to reach an agreement with distributor Kakao M. Spotify launched in South Korea on February 1, 2021 without music from artists with licensing deals under Kakao M. Not all K-pop artists songs are gone from Spotify but fans called it the Thanos snap. In a statement, Spotify said artists with distributing licenses under Kakao M have been removed from the platform after they failed to reach an agreement with the Korean company to renew streaming rights.
Following this development, many K-pop fans globally have canceled their Spotify Premium memberships. Songs by some of the Korean artists, including Jessi and HyunA, have eventually found their way back on Spotify.
Kakao M is South Korea’s top music distributor. It also owns and operates Melon, the country’s top music streaming service, with 8.81 million monthly active users.
“We have been making efforts in all directions over the past year and a half to renew the global licensing agreement so that we could continue to make Kakao M artists’ music available to fans all over the world, as well as our 345 million users in 170 different regions. However, in spite of this, we were unable to reach an agreement about renewing our global license,” said Spotify in a statement.
Kakao M claimed, however, that it was Spotify which chose not to renew their agreement, even after a request on the Korean company’s part.
“Unrelated to the domestic contract, which we are still negotiating, we separately received notice of the expiration of our license on February 28, and we requested a renewal of our existing global contract. Due to Spotify’s policy that they must proceed with the domestic and global contracts at the same time, our global contract has currently expired,” they continued. “We are currently continuing our negotiations about the supply of music,” said Kakao M.
For now, what are our options? We could go for YouTube Premium, which gives us access to YouTube Music; or we could subscribe to Apple Music. Or we could just play those CDs in the albums we’ve been buying.
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