The Swedish music streaming giant is currently present in
over 90 countries and has entered into several new markets in the last two
years including Russia, India and the Middle East.
In South Korea, the company will compete with music
streaming companies such as Melon, Genie, FLO and Apple Music.
"We wanted to be super thoughtful in how we approach
coming into a market like this as we didn't want to just take a global service
and launch it into South Korea," Alex Norstrom, Chief Freemium Business
Officer of Spotify, told Reuters.
The offering is tailored to the market with right
relationships with local partners, both on the content side as well as on the
distribution side, he said.
Spotify will give Korean listeners access to over 60 million
tracks along with a wide range of Korean music, including K-pop, Hip Hop and
Indie.
K-pop is a multi-billion dollar global music industry with
bands such as like BTS and BLACKPINK building huge fan bases outside South
Korea.