Spotify premium without IU is just...

Feel bad for her. She is gaining traction internationally and she has new songs coming up. This would have been a really good time to gain more international fans. I know KakaoM is playing hardball right now, but the artists under it are the ones being short-changed.

Quote from Jungkookskook

I feel bad for all the artist affected, a lot of them are relatively small and Korea and get most of their profit from international fans, now they just took that away from them and now have to suck up what happened with what little they have in Korea

That’s the thing, though. The Big 3 artists and BH group (BTS and TXT) are not affected, and these are the groups that have been doing relatively well even with the pandemic.

There are a ton of kpop groups under Kakao M that have been struggling since the pandemic started. They are more dependent on income from these streams because a lot of other source of income have been cut off (touring, feativals, fan signs, etc). Also, the global exposure they were getting (regardless of how big or small it was) was a plus. Now without even being asked, KakaoM went ahead and cut this off, too. Artists like IU and the other bigger ones can afford to wait it out. A lot of the smaller/struggling ones might not make it.