If you’re an avid K-pop fan who takes pride in curating aesthetically pleasing Spotify playlists to organise your library of favourites, you may have been in despair over recent events of late.
On Monday (1 Mar), K-pop fans from all over the globe woke up only to find out that the events of Infinity War had come to life right within their very own Spotify accounts.
Songs from numerous K-pop artists had mysteriously vanished from playlists, and when these songs were searched up, Spotify “greyed” them out, preventing them from being played or added back into playlists.
No, Thanos hadn’t stolen half the K-Pop songs in the world with a snap of his fingers. Rather, the cruel vanishing act was caused by a dispute between two giant corporations: music streaming app Spotify and South Korean music distributor Kakao M.
What a great way to start off the month of March.
Spotify and Kakao M Dispute Causes Hundreds of K-Pop Songs to be Removed From Spotify
On 1 March, songs that had been distributed by Kakao M, South Korea’s top music distributor, were found to have been removed from Spotify.
Spotify released a statement confirming that its existing licensing deal with Kakao M had come to an end. They expressed their hope that the disruption would only be temporary and that the situation would be resolved soon.
However, Kakao M soon responded to this with their own statement accusing Spotify of refusing to renew their agreement even after a request on the part of Kakao M.
There had been speculation that the disappearance of the songs could be related to the launching of Spotify’s new service in South Korea, which took place on 1 Feb this year.
Fans and critics suspected that this Spotify service could potentially have been in conflict of interest with Kakao M, which owns MelOn, the nation’s most popular streaming service.
However, Kakao M stated that the expiration of the existing global contract remains completely separate from the domestic contract to make music available on the South Korean version of Spotify, which is currently undergoing negotiations.
Artists Implicated, Fans Distressed
The removal of songs has implicated many K-Pop groups and musical artists, including big names like SEVENTEEN, LOONA, GFRIEND, MAMAMOO, MONSTA X, ASTRO, (G)I-DLE, KARD, IU and countless others.
Artists from the South Korean hip-hop scene including DPR LIVE, GIRIBOY, CODE KUNST, GroovyRoom and CHANGMO have also had their music pulled from the platform.
An extensive list of artists that have been affected has been created by @lemonphobic on Twitter.
artists that had their stuff on spotify deleted, a thread
wei
kim wooseok
the boyz
d1ce
bibi
minseo
iu
victon
pink fantasy
epik high
cherry bullet
oneus
e'last
cravity
giriboy
june
kim sunggyu
bae173
moonbyul
dpr live
wh3n
woo!ah!
hyolyn
code kunst
drippin
jannabi
jukjae— ً (@lemonphobic) February 28, 2021
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These artists have seen entire albums and discographies being wiped out from Spotify. A fan account of the boy group SEVENTEEN posted a tweet pointing out that their total number of streams had decreased by more than a billion because of the dispute.
.@pledis_17 Total on Spotify
BEFORE: 1,260,197,540
NOW: 297,069,572— SEVENTEEN;Streams (@svt_spotify) February 28, 2021
Tablo, leader and producer of hip-hop group Epik High, uploaded an emotional tweet capturing the frustration of artists and fans over the issue.
He questioned why fans and artists have to be the ones to pay the price “when businesses place greed over art”.
Apparently a disagreement between our distributor Kakao M & Spotify has made our new album Epik High Is Here unavailable globally against our will. Regardless of who is at fault, why is it always the artists and the fans that suffer when businesses place greed over art?
— 에픽하이 타블로 | Tablo of Epik High (@blobyblo) February 28, 2021
Fans can only take comfort in the fact that artists under major entertainment labels in South Korea such as SM, JYP, YG and Big Hit seem to be unaffected by the issue. These companies are home to K-Pop powerhouses like BTS, BLACKPINK, TWICE and NCT.
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It looks like us K-Pop fans have to hope that we will wake up one day and our playlists will be miraculously complete once again, just like how they were decimated out of the blue.
For more information, read this article.
Feature Image: Instagram (@saythename_17)
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