On February 1, Spotify launched in Korea with a promise to bring positive change to Korean artists. Spotify may be the largest music streaming service in the world, but despite the abundance of Korean pop music on its servers, it didn’t have a platform in the country until recently. Spotify’s South Korean launch should have expanded the possibilities for Korean artists. The debacle is a case study in both the perils of the entertainment industry’s trend toward centralized (even monopolistic) streaming platforms and the way territorial music industry practices can so frequently rebound directly upon the artists and the public. And while some of the affected artists have since been able to return to Spotify thanks to relationships with other distributors, the vast majority remain sidelined, with all of their Spotify streaming data erased as well. The reason involves a complicated licensing dispute between Spotify and a South Korean distributor, Kakao M, which is now one of Spotify’s direct competitors thanks to the latter’s recent launch in the country.Īmid public backlash over the music’s removal, the companies have blamed each other for the breakdown in negotiations.
On February 28, hundreds of K-pop artists - encompassing a huge range of genres and styles, from older hits to brand-new albums - were purged from the music streaming service. If you’ve noticed some of your favorite bops missing from your Spotify playlists, you’re not alone.
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