Spotify (SPOT) has removed the entire catalog of Zee Music, India’s second-biggest domestic music label. The streaming giant says the two parties were “unable to reach a licensing agreement.”
Zee Music has acquired the rights to more than half of all current Bollywood releases, and has more than 93 million subscribers on YouTube.
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What Songs Were Removed?
One of the songs removed was “Apna Bana Le,” a song from the 2022 film “Bhediya” and most-streamed song on Spotify’s platform in India for the past few months. A spokesperson for Spotify told CNN it tried to find “creative ways to strike a deal with Zee Music,” and hoped to find “a mutually agreeable solution soon.”
The upbeat sound of Bollywood is one of the most popular genres of music in the world, and is typically associated with elaborately choreographed dance scenes from Hindi cinema. The genre has had an explosion in popularity in America in the past several years due to viral dance music clips, and the success of the critically acclaimed Indian action film “RRR,” which was one of Netflix’s most popular titled last year, and which earned an Oscar for Best Original Song for “Naatu Naatu.”
While the exact details of why the deal with Zee Music broke down are unknown, artists have long complained that the service’s royalty payments are too low for them to make a living from playing music.
