Some Spotify users may have noticed, on Monday, March 1, that thousands of K-pop songs have disappeared from the repertoire of the Swedish music streaming platform. As reported by the BBC, a contractual dispute between Spotify and Kakao M, the distributor who owns the rights to many artists of this musical genre from South Korea, has arisen, resulting in the removal of music from IU, Epik High, Sistar, or Monsta X, on the audio giant’s platform.
Spotify said its “existing license agreement” with Kakao M had “ended,” but it hoped the disruption would be temporary. For its part, the Korean company accuses the Swedish platform of refusing to extend its license, explains the British media. “We asked to renew the existing contract, but we were notified of the expiration of our contract abroad,” she also said in a statement.
“Our global contract is currently expired”
This disagreement between Kakao M and Spotify comes barely a month after the arrival of Swedish on the South Korean market, where it is in competition with MelOn, the music platform of Kakao M. arrival of Spotify in South Korea: “Unrelated to the domestic contract, which we are still negotiating, we separately received a notice of our license expiration on February 28 and we requested the renewal of our global contract existing ”detailed Kakao M, who also explains that“ due to Spotify’s policy that they must perform domestic and global contracts at the same time, our global contract is currently expired ”.
In total, 200 K-Pop artists have seen their music removed from Spotify, leaving speechless many fans who have lambasted this disagreement between the two companies, on social networks. Their titles, however, remain available on other platforms such as Deezer, Apple Music or even YouTube.
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