Missing K-Pop on Spotify

I literally just signed up for Spotify Premium three weeks ago, and today, about 50% of my playlist disappeared. After Googling a bit, it turns out that Spotify’s license with Kakao M has expired on March 1st, so Spotify had to remove all the songs that Kakao M distributes. I read somewhere that is about 35% of Spotify’s K-Pop songs.

This totally sucks. I had just got into a lot of independent artists and Korean R&B, and most of those artists’ songs have disappeared. The big 3: SM, JYPE, and YG are still there, along with some other larger companies, but a lot of small and indie artists use Kakao M and it is all gone. I believe it is because Kakao M wants to increase their streaming service, thus eliminating competition with Spotify. Spotify never had a license for South Korea anyway. What this does is remove access and license income for all these artists worldwide without any alternative streaming services. Where is Kakao M’s streaming service in the US? Do they even have one ready for launch? Do they think fans will pay for another streaming service just for 35% of the Korean music market? Delusional. What will happen, for me anyway, is if this is not resolved within a few weeks/months, I will just cancel Spotify Premium and find somewhere to get my K-Pop.

Sometimes anti-competitive and monopolistic policies by companies come back and shoot themselves in the foot.

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I forgot. Another reason I paid for Spotify Premium is that it is part of the entertainment system in my Tesla. There is a Spotify button but it only works with premium accounts, i.e., not the free accounts. It is convenient to listen to my playlists on the computer or phone, then jump in the car, and have the music continue on the same playlist. However, that all becomes moot when the songs are not even available on Spotify anymore. I also have about 90% of the older K-Pop songs in iTunes as MP3 files so I guess I can go back to copying files to a USB drive and inserting that into my car. Currently, the K-Pop genre on my iTunes Music app has 4,110 items or 10.1 days, and taking up 34.26 GB on the SSD.