World’s most popular audio streaming subscription service launches in the birthplace of K-Pop

Spotify launches its service in South Korea, giving Korean listeners access to over 60 million tracks and over 4 billion playlists from around the world. As the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service, Spotify offers an effortlessly simple interface, an innovative technology framework, everyday new music discovery and algorithmic recommendations personalized to each listener’s music taste. This launch brings Spotify’s total number of markets to 93.

As the sixth-largest music market in the world*, South Korea is a critical next step in Spotify’s global expansion journey. Not only is South Korea among the most digitally inclusive markets in the world, but it is also widely recognized as a cultural and music epicenter, in part due to the global phenomena K-Pop. Since Spotify debuted its first K-Pop playlist in 2014, the share of K-Pop listening on the platform has increased by more than 2,000%. With this launch, Spotify plans to accelerate the growth of Korea’s entire music streaming ecosystem, benefitting creators, labels, distributors and fans.

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“We always want to be where the listeners and artists are, and Korea is rich in both,” said Alex Norström, Chief Freemium Business Officer of Spotify. “This launch presents a massive opportunity for us to not only further our mission of bringing new and quality content to more audiences, but also help local Korean artists tap into Spotify’s 320 million listeners worldwide. We hope to create more opportunities for Korean artists across all genres to be discovered by listeners around the world.”

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Spotify has uniquely tailored the music experience for each market. As a part of today’s launch, Spotify is introducing a range of new playlists made exclusively for South Korea. These playlists offer curated and the latest music from our team of Korean music experts, across some of the most popular genres. These include:

• TOP Playlists: Korean Music Hot Now, FRESH! New Music Korea, Hot Hits Korea, Korean Music Rising, Today’s Drama OST Hot Now, K-Pop Daebak and more
• Genre Playlists: TrenChill K-R&B, TrenChill K-Hip Hop, K-HIP-HOP +82, K-Are & Be, In The K-Indie, Korean City Pop, K-Rock Spirit, Folk & Acoustic Hot Now, Orchestra Korean Ballad and more
• Thematic Playlists: You Did Well, The End of the Day, So Cool Driving, Brain Rest 432Hz, Lullaby zZZ, Transcendental Game Play, Running K-Pop, GAYO Instrumentals, Spring Music, Into the Rain, Next Page of the Break-up, Kitchen Melodies and more
• ‘Starring’ playlists: This Is BTS, This Is BLACKPINK, This Is Stray Kids, This Is NCT, This Is TWICE, This is Taeyeon, This Is JAY Park, This Is CHUNG HA, This Is Loco and more

These new playlists will join Spotify’s K-Pop genre hub that encompasses a wide range of Korean music, including K-pop, Hip Hop, Indie, OST, R&B and more, as well as ‘RADAR Korea’, a playlist uncovering fresh K-music finds and a part of Spotify’s global emerging artist program. The hub is localized in over 72 countries, including Russia, India, Brazil and the UAE.

In Korea, new listeners can try out Spotify Premium 7 days-free on their mobile phone with no credit card information and a total of 3 months-free with credit card information, if subscribed before the end of June 2021. Listeners can engage with Spotify across a wide range of devices and app integrations including Instagram, Facebook, Samsung mobile and TV, LG TV, Microsoft Xbox, Bose and more.

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