Samsung appears to have had a change of heart on whether to charge for its Milk Music service in South Korea. Yesterday, the Korea Music Copyright Association ended its contract with Soribada, a subcontractor and local music distributor involved with Milk Music, because of a clause that required the streaming platform to charge customers for listening, which it claimed made ongoing operation of the service a copyright violation. Today, Samsung announced that it would introduce a premium tier to Milk. According to Korea Bizwire, the paid plan will arrive in Samsung’s home country in the first quarter of 2015.
There’s already a premium plan available to U.S. listeners, but that appeared before Milk had even launched in Korea. It remains to be seen how similar the services will be.