Asia: Blackpink, TikTok, Entertainment Committee for Stadium Arena

Hot K-pop girl group Blackpink was scheduled to hold a press conference to celebrate the release of their EP, Kill This Love, on April 5, but the management company YG Entertainment decided to cancel the event due to a wildfire raging in Gangwon Province in the northeast portion of South Korea. 

The Goseong-Sokcho forest fire is already the biggest wildfire in modern history in the country, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents. The press conference was canceled, according to Korea Portal, “in support of the residents of the area affected.” The South Korean government declared a state of emergency in the province.

The disaster did not affect sales of the EP, which were even greater than expected ahead of Blackpink’s World Tour. In less than 10 hours, the video of the single, “Kill This Love,” garnered 20 million views on YouTube, making it the fastest K-pop video of a girl group to hit 20 million. Moreover, the single became the first song by a girl group on the U.S. iTunes chart to reach No.  1 since Destiny’s Child. 

Though the international music business continues to court China as a growing market, matters regarding copyrights and royalties continue to plague the relationship. On April 6, Sony/ATV Music Publishing accused Hunan TV, one of China’s biggest state-owned TV networks, of using songs without permission. According to newsletter Sixth Tone, on April 5, four singers performed a medley of four Queen songs during an installment of the hit music show “Singer,” which features established Chinese artists competing with one another.

Sony/ATV manages the copyrights for Queen and in its statement urged Hunan TV to “respect and protect” the rights of artists. The company also demanded compensation for the use of the songs.

Sixth Tone said that Hunan TV did not respond to requests for comments, but Sony/ATV told the newsletter that it would not comment while it was discussing the matter with the network. Sixth Tone did point out that music reality shows have become ubiquitous in China and that they usually secure rights to the songs performed by contestants, though some copyright holders claim they have been ignored. Chinese copyright law states that anyone who uses another artist’s work for commercial purposes must be compensated after securing permission. However, experts have said that various difficulties in securing permission often means copyrights are infringed upon. One problem, according to one expert interviewed by Sixth Tone, is that the penalty for infringement isn’t very steep.

In similar news, Bloomberg reports that the three major record labels are pressuring the Chinese company ByteDance for not compensating them for songs they control that were used on ByteDance’s extremely popular app TikTok, a short-form mobile video and live streaming platform based in Los Angeles. ByteDance, which was founded in 2012 by a Chinese developer named Zhang Yiming, owns the app.

TikTok has become one of the fastest growing apps in Asia, with more than 1 billion downloads from Apple’s App Store and Google Play as of February. Record labels have demanded “hundreds of millions of dollars in guaranteed money” from ByteDance, according to Bloomberg. ByteDance is valued at around $75 billion. The company has supposedly agreed to pay, but since it is not a “pure-play music streaming service,” it shouldn’t have to pay as much as what labels are demanding. On TikTok, users basically play snippets of songs, sometimes in the background. Therefore, according to ByteDance, the videos are “not product for pure music consumption that requires a label’s entire collection.” 

Speaking of TikTok, the app has launched a talent search program in Asia that aims to “discover independent musicians,” starting in Japan and South Korea. The project, called TikTok Spotlight, was launched in Seoul on March 28. Artists can upload music videos through the program’s portal from April 5 to May 31 to compete for prizes, which include record deals and performance opportunities, according to TechNode.com.

Selected videos will be featured on a playlist that can be viewed by users, and for five months starting April 5, a time period that TikTok is calling the “first season” of the program, there will be three rounds of judging that will reduce the number of contestants to between 5 and 10 performers. The first round will rely on number of plays as well as input from a panel of judges. The second round will reduce the number of contestants to 18, and a final round will reduce that number to between 5 and 10. The final round may include live performances by contestants. 

Twenty-one record labels will cooperate with TikTok Spotlight, as well as 26 producers, songwriters and singers from Japan and South Korea, who will act as “mentors and judges.”

TikTok is already cooperating with some established acts in the two countries, including K-pop boy band BTS. TechNode reports, however, that the three major labels’ complaint about improper usage of their properties on TikTok may complicate their involvement with TikTok Spotlight.