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Dropped K-pop tracks return to Spotify after Kakao Entertainment deal is secured
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 12 March 2021
Spotify has agreed a new licensing deal with South Korean music distributor Kakao M – or the Kakao Entertainment Corp, if you prefer – meaning that the stack of K-pop tracks that were recently pulled from the streaming service worldwide can now return.
Kakao represents a significant portion of South Korean pop releases, which meant that when the firm’s global licensing deal with Spotify expired at the end of last month without renewal, K-pop fans quickly noticed all the missing tunes, taking to social media to list them.
Spotify said that it had been working for eighteen months on securing a new deal, but hadn’t got an agreement in place by the time the old licence expired. For its part, Kakao said that it was happy for its old deal to just roll over. However, it went on, Spotify now wanted to include South Korea itself in the licence, and that’s where the sticking point was.
South Korea hadn’t previously been covered by the Kakao licence, of course, because Spotify has only very recently launched in that market. The distributor was seemingly driving a much harder bargain on its home turf, possibly because it is part of the same group that operates the market-leading domestic streaming service in South Korea, Melon.
According to sources that spoke to Variety, Spotify was ultimately successful in getting some concessions from Kakao within South Korea by linking the local licensing talks with the renewal of the global deal. After Spotify pulled the Kakao catalogue in the rest of the world, criticism from the affected artists and their fans reportedly pushed the distributor back to the negotiating table pretty damn quickly.
Confirming the new deal, Spotify said: “We are pleased that Kakao Entertainment’s content and artists are back on Spotify, allowing our 345 million+ global listeners across 170 countries to once again enjoy the music they love. Spotify’s mission has always been to connect artists to their fans all over the world and to give listeners access to all of the world’s music”.
“We are delighted that our Korean listeners will now also be able to enjoy this local music alongside our 70 million+ songs and four billion playlists”, it went on. “We remain committed to making a positive impact on Korea’s music streaming ecosystem through our partnerships with artists, labels, and local rightsholders”.
Meanwhile, a statement from Kakao Entertainment said: “Kakao Entertainment Corp has entered into an agreement with Spotify and will sequentially provide its music content to Spotify for service in and beyond Korea”.
“Through its diverse partnerships around the world, including Spotify, Kakao Entertainment hopes that music lovers around the world can easily access its artists’ and music content to enjoy K-pop”, it added. “Kakao Entertainment remains committed to the Korean music ecosystem and its growth and will continue protecting the rights of artists, labels and local rights-holders going forward”.
