Spotify Has Removed A Ton Of K-Pop Artists From The Platform - Here's Why

It has been revealed that certain K-Pop artists are no longer on Spotify, according to NME.

The site is reporting that reason is because Spotify is in discussion with distributor Kakao M.

Spotify officially launched in South Korea earlier this month, but did so without music from artists with licensing deals under Kakao M.

Kakao M’s catalogue would no longer be available to users around the globe from March 1, 2021 “due to the expiration of our license,” a statement on the site says.

“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,” they added. “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.”

The artists affected by this deal include CL, The Boyz, GFriend, Epik High, IU, Cherry Bullet, Cravity, Mamamoo, Nu’est and many more.

Seventeen was another big group affected by this, and a fan Twitter revealed that the group have lost nearly 1billion streams after their music was removed from Spotify.

Stay tuned for updates on this…