Hundreds of K-Pop songs by KakaoM removed from Spotify

K-Pop has been making waves both in South Korea and outside their homeland. And with the recent launch of Spotify Korea, international fans are expecting it to be recognized by major Korean music shows as an additional attempt in making more underrated artists and groups succeed without totally relying on Korean streaming platforms and Korean fans alone. But the recent feud between KakaoM and Spotify put everything to a screeching halt.

What is KakaoM?

KakaoM is a large co-publisher of K-Pop albums by Korean artists. Other than being a music publishing house, they’re also a music and concert production house, events management agency, talent agency, and even a record label. This basically means they can handle everything from handling K-Pop trainees and talents, up to pre-production, production, and post-production phases of a single, EP, mini album, or even a full album.

Image by GadgetMatch

Other than KakaoM’s in-house artists like IU (under EDAM Entertainment), Apink, VICTON, and Weeekly (under PlayM Entertainment), as well as non-KakaoM talents such as LOONA, Dreamcatcher, MAMAMOO, GFRIEND, SEVENTEEN, HyunA, and (G)-IDLE, this long Twitter thread shows the full list of K-Pop groups, duos, and soloists that are handled and/or whose albums were published by KakaoM:

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

Explaining the fiasco

Image by GadgetMatch

In an article published by the Korean site NAVER, Spotify has informed that KakaoM was unable to extend the validity of the agreement. Thus, effectively ending the contract today, March 1, 2021. Spotify also reported that they’ve been keeping in touch with KakaoM for a year but to no avail. They even said that KakaoM never informed the artists nor their respective agencies prior to the cancellation.

KakaoM isn’t totally a stranger in such issues. This already happened in 2019 when KakaoM failed to mass produce LOONA’s “[X X]” albums despite the large volumes of album pre-orders. That hindered LOONA from getting their first win in a music show. It even came to a point where they failed to renew LOONA’s songs listed under them in Spotify.

FIRST YOU RUIN LOONA’S SALES AND THEIR CHANCE FOR A FIRST WIN IN 2019, NOW YOU REMOVE HALF OF THE SONGS I LISTEN TO ON SPOTIFY……THIS IS IT…….YOU WILL NEVER SEE THE END OF ME KAKAO M I WANT YOU GONE FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!

— nina! (@jeonsbits) February 28, 2021

This also has a massive effect among international K-Pop artists and fans in general. With the large number of groups and artists alone, Spotify not only helps them get on a larger scale outside Korea, but it also contributes records to music charts such as Billboard.

Streaming charts have always been a big deal among K-Pop fans. With Spotify’s recent entry in the Korean music industry, fans have speculated that this unsettled agreement between Spotify and KakaoM was due to the fact that they don’t want to lose Melon, which is Korea’s top and largest music streaming platform with 28 million subscribers.

Other than the reliance of chartings and rankings by music shows such as Mnet’s M Countdown, KBS’s Music Core, SBS’s Inkigayo, MBC’s Music Core, and more, the streaming platform is owned by none other than KakaoM. This is a speculation all along but the fact that Spotify has 345+ million subscribers in 170 markets dwarfs Melon alone.

Stan Twitter memes everywhere

Some fans were able to make humor out of this controversy.

kakao m: removes their artist’ songs from spotify

kpop stans: lets boycott spotify

spotify: pic.twitter.com/029yZmZVBU

— ? (@jjkpremacist) March 1, 2021

With KakaoM’s Melon ownership, international fans have joked around that signing up to Melon will never happen.

Lmao Kakao M thought people gonna go to Melon after they remove their content from Spotify but instead we all went to YouTube music and apple music pic.twitter.com/lAQe330xgt

— ? ? SEOKJIN’S VOCALS ARE HEAVEN ITSELF (@millkygyuu) March 1, 2021

The fury of the K-Pop international fanbase might have made KakaoM realize their wrong action.

Kakao M after realizing removing songs on spotify is a stupid move: pic.twitter.com/6oT9zDWXbu

— minwon ; \? D-2 (@Meaniethepooh) March 1, 2021

Orbits aren’t late to the meme party

Orbits KakaoM
thinking removing
this week 2 #LOONA
is albums from
finally over: Spotify: pic.twitter.com/iKCZRadiQ1

— TEAMLOONA (@loonateams) March 1, 2021

It seems like every K-Pop fan is transferring to YouTube Music (not even Apple Music)

Spotify and Kakao m issue
~
Meanwhile youtube music: pic.twitter.com/QEtPv0D9EL

— JunHoshi 1+ (@YeyHuihuiii) March 1, 2021

KakaoM as Thanos, anyone?

Kakao M, which holds the streaming rights to many South Korean artists (and owns Melon), have pulled out of their license agreement with Spotify causing many Korean songs and artists to be unavailable on Spotify worldwide.

When you can’t handle the competition … pic.twitter.com/no13lEpUb6

— Nuice Media (@nuicemedia) March 1, 2021

Memes aside, Spotify has re-assured fans that this issue is temporary and can still be resolved once KakaoM reaches a new global deal. Fans (like me) are hoping that KakaoM will settle this as soon as possible or this might be a huge loss not just to them, but for fans, artists, and their respective agencies as well.