Spotify On Missing K-pop Songs: License Agreement With Kakao M Expires

JAKARTA - Today, Monday, March 1, almost all K-pop songs have disappeared from Spotify, causing fans to protest via social media. What's the matter?

The dispute between the two companies is the main focus. Spotify stated that Spotify's contract with Kakao M has expired.

"Due to the expiration of the license agreement with Kakao M, the music catalog will not be available to fans and listeners around the world starting March 1, 2021," said Spotify as quoted by Yonhap.

Fans began to notice the disappearance of K-pop songs when they couldn't play a number of songs. One of them, IU's new song entitled Celebrity. IU's profile on Spotify still exists, but all of her songs cannot be played.

“We worked hard for more than a year and a half to provide Kakao M artist's music to fans around the world for 345 million users in 170 countries. But we haven't reached an agreement for a new license. "

The public suspects that this agreement is related to Kakao, which houses streaming service Melon, which was intimidated by the launch of Spotify in Korea last month. However, Spotify emphasized that it had nothing to do with the issues that were circulating.

Spotify is trying to solve this problem so that fans can listen to K-pop releases as before.

It is known that a Twitter user named @lemonphobic wrote a list of K-pop artists whose songs were missing from Spotify. Among them are GFRIEND, SECRET NUMBER, MAMAMOO, MONSTA X, SEVENTEEN, and others.

K-pop artists under BIG 3: SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment, and Big Hit Entertainment (outside BigHit Labels) are not affected by this work. However, collaborative projects outside the agency such as soundtracks for Korean dramas sung by the agency BIG 3 and Big Hit are also missing.

Tablo from the Epik High group spoke up about this. “The feud between our distributors, Kakao M and Spotify made our new album, Epik High is Here not available globally to our liking. Regardless of who is at fault, why do artists and fans suffer when business puts greed over art first?"