Spotify gets into a licensing dispute with Zee Music: Kalank, Bhediya & several other albums removed – Smartprix

Music streaming platform Spotify has taken down the songs belonging to the Zee Music Company from its platform after the talks to renew their license agreement broke down. The dispute over licensing agreements has led to the removal of many popular Bollywood albums like Baar Baar Dekho, Bhediya, Kalank, and more.

Songs like Apna Bana Le, Kalank, Kala Chashma, and more are no longer streaming on Spotify thus annoying the listeners. A report from Business today claims that all the tracks from Zee’s label were removed from Spotify on March 14th, but the platform did not notify fans about the development until much later. The platform now has a disclaimer that says it doesn’t provide access to all the music and podcasts in the world. Like OTT platforms such as Netflix, Spotify also negotiates to license deals with publishers and rights owners so their music can be played online.

Earlier in 2022, Zee Music did not renew its licensing agreement with Gaana App and since then Gaana became a subscription-only service.

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What is the dispute between Spotify & Zee Music Company?

A spokesperson from Spotify informs that the music label and Spotify could not come to a license agreement. Spotify has been trying to reach a deal with Zee Music by making novel approaches, but nothing has worked so far. Spotify has been negotiating in good faith and still hopes to reach a mutually satisfactory decision.

This is not the first time that such an issue has happened, in the past as well there have been disputes between Spotify and Zee Music as well as Spotify and Sony Music. Spotify has been in India for 4 years now and in the last quarter of 2022, the streaming platform had 205 million paid subscribers all over the world. Zee Music has 93.6 million YouTube subscribers and comes 2nd to only T-Series, which has 283 million subscribers worldwide.

Fans Uproar on Twitter

The removal of many good Bollywood songs and albums has led to anger among Hindi music enthusiasts in the country. The reaction was seen on Twitter wherein some fans posted funny memes while others threatened to cancel the Spotify Premium subscription. Many claimed that they would shift to YouTube Music or Amazon Music now while others asked Spotify to charge extra but bring back the songs it has removed. Here are some tweets showing fan reactions

What all has left Spotify?

Zee Music had over 12 dozen singles on Spotify’s Daily Top 200 Songs Chart in India. Popular songs like ‘Maiya Mainu’ from Jersey, ‘Makhna’ from Drive, ‘Kala Chashma’ from Baar Baar Dekho, Kalank Album, Bajirao Mastani Album, Raees Album have all been taken down.

The soundtrack of Gully Boy was one of the most streamed albums that have now been taken down after the licensing agreement failed.

Well, this is just a short list so you can imagine the misery of music enthusiasts who brought Spotify Premium and now can’t listen to their favorite songs.

We sincerely hope the matter resolves soon so that all your favorite tracks come back to Spotify.

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