Entertainment management companies have called for the establishment of a standard contract for the act of earning additional income from music program videos uploaded online.

The Korea Music Content Association (Chairman Kim Chang Hwan), the Korea Management Association (Chairman Shin Joo Hak), and the Korea Entertainment Producers Association (Chairman Lim Baek Woon) announced on July 1 that they have applied to the Fair Trade Commission for a standard contract on the use of videos featuring pop culture artists (singers).

Pop culture artists such as idols have routinely appeared in music programs without a contract between the broadcasting companies and management companies. For this reason, the broadcasting companies interpreted as owning the copyright on the video. Hence, there was no problem with broadcasting the videos recorded for broadcasting purposes. However, there are people calling for a new contract as more and more people are using OTT (Over the top/streaming) services such as YouTube to watch music programs instead of watching through traditional live TV broadcasts.

An official said, there are additional contents being created by cutting or editing the videos of singers who appeared on music programs such as KBS2's 'Music Bank', SBS's 'Inkigayo', and MBC's 'Show Music Core'. Then they are uploaded to YouTube. Some unreleased videos or pre-recording videos are sold to telecommunication companies for a profit. Even the fan cams, footages that are directly taken by fans focusing on a single member of a group while they are performing, are sold to businesses. During this process, however, the singers or the management companies cannot claim any rights to those videos even though the artists themselves appear and sing in those videos. One unnamed broadcasting company requested the management companies to forfeit portrait rights in order to resell the videos, causing a stir up.

The standard contract, which the Korea Music Content Association and others applied to the FTC this time, stipulates the scope of the use of video footage taken by broadcasting stations. The broadcasting company has free usage of the footage when used during the main broadcast or a rerun. However, the footages will be subject to prior consultation when such footages are edited and uploaded to the OTT or provided to VOD services for other purposes. Additionally, unreleased footages also can only be available

after prior consultation.

Choi Kwang Ho, secretary-general of the Korea Music Content Association, stated "The application for the establishment of the terms and conditions is aimed at establishing a sound trading order between broadcasting companies and management companies," he added, "If a standard contract is established, that contract can play a role as the basic contract and an annex agreement on the use of video footage by broadcasting stations". He concluded to say "It won't be easy to break the precedent of the broadcasting company's practice. However, we can expect the K-pop content market to grow together through the fair contracts starting with this."


Netizens commented:

"Don't they get royalty pay if their music is played?"

"I thought the management companies were already paid for those videos."

"Of course the management companies should have a share in the profit. I'm surprised they weren't being paid until now."

"I always wondered how the profit on the music program videos on Youtube was split. They never had any of the artists tagged. I guess they weren't sharing the profit."

"Wow, the broadcasting companies were scamming the artists basically."

"Can't believe they weren't paid."