Fans went into a frenzy after finding out that various top kpop acts songs on Spotify have disappeared.
Fans could no longer access many songs distributed by Kakao M. Spotify and Kakao M continue to dominate worldwide trends on twitter as fans discuss the fallout of this shocking news.
UPDATE: Kakao M has also issued a response
On March 1, in a statement to media outlet NME, Spotify confirmed that Kakao M’s catalogue would no longer be available to users beginning March 1, here is what they told NME,
“We have been working with KakaoM over the last year and a half to renew the global licensing agreement, so that their artists’ music would remain available to Spotify’s 345M+ listeners in nearly 170 markets around the world.
Despite our best efforts, the existing licensing deal we had with KakaoM (which covered all countries other than South Korea) has come to an end.
The fact that we have not yet reached agreement on a new global deal is unfortunate for their artists, as well as for fans and listeners worldwide. It is our hope that this disruption will be temporary and we can resolve the situation soon. We remain committed to working with local rights holders including KakaoM, to help grow the Korean music market and overall streaming ecosystem together.”
Some of the artists affected by this include IU, Cherry Bullet, Cravity, GFriend, Mamamoo, CL, Nu’est, MONSTA X, SEVENTEEN and many many more.
Artists signed to SM, YG, JYP and BigHit Entertainment (excluding BigHit Labels) are unaffected by this.
This issue will cause a lot of damage to the artists, as it appears many of them are finding out about this through their fan accounts. Some of the biggest kpop acts have lost hundreds of millions of streams as a result of this.
Kakao M owns Melon and Melon is South Korea’s largest music subscription service. As many fans are already aware, Spotify has launched its platform in South Korea recently and has become a direct competitor of the music market that Melon and Genie have dominated for years. Fans have noticed that since day one, no one in South Korea could listen to Kpop music on Spotify Korea.
What do you think of this?
