EXO songs removed from Spotify due to Kakao M's big EGO

Some of the songs from there, like Go Away Go Away and My Love, are among my favourite solo songs. This is so sad.

Quote from Kreatin

It's because spotify is flopping in sokor and Kakao M refuses to make a deal with spotify for all the artists they are distributors for, as they also happen to own Melon and don't wanna give any market share to spotify. Problem for spotify is that kakao is huge and the largest distributor of music domestically. Problem now for Kakao is that they are banned worldwide from the biggest music platform that exists.

Interesting times but i think Kakao will fold in the end, pretty sure all their artists and companies they distribute for are not too pleased about this development.

So do we have confirmation that spotify actually removed the songs, and not that they didn't just pull the music for themselves?

Even if spotify isn't as successful domestically as other platforms (I have no idea whether spotify is actually successful in SK or not), it puzzles me that a company would just choose to wreck their international market like that. Spotify is easily one of the largest distro platforms on the web. Do they not like making international money or something? And yeah, I'm betting the artists are none too pleased.

bruv

Quote from aristophenes

So do we have confirmation that spotify actually removed the songs, and not that they didn't just pull the music for themselves?

Even if spotify isn't as successful domestically as other platforms (I have no idea whether spotify is actually successful in SK or not), it puzzles me that a company would just choose to wreck their international market like that. Spotify is easily one of the largest distro platforms on the web. Do they not like making international money or something? And yeah, I'm betting the artists are none too pleased.

There's no official confirmations yet afaik, but kakao would have nothing to gain by pulling the music themselves from international spotify (it was only for korea they blocked spotify)

Im 99,9% sure this is a power move from spotify to force kakao to make a deal with them in korea.

Spotifiy was just launched like a month ago, but going by their stream numbers from the new korean top lists they are not doing good and in fact the numbers have actually gone down by the week since launch. Probably at the same rate as people realised that the music they listen too wasnt available, only "kpop"/idol music.

Apple music never managed to get a deal with kakao either, they've been there for four years and their market share is like 1%.

Here's a ongoing list of all the artists that are no longer available:

https://twitter.com/lemonphobic/status/1366048808220639234