Han Jisung of SKZ has just released a SKZ Player (to people who are not familiar with SKZ – it is a side project where SKZ members releases original songs usually written and composed by them on Youtube, not for sale, without typical kpop promotion – and recently, they get to film MVs for it, depending on how they want it to be).
It is really a passion project – it has been going for years. They will randomly drop these original songs based on their own interest and Han is the most profilic out of them all – all his SKZ Player can fit into multiple albums.
The latest one was released 9 days ago called ‘back to life’, a rock-based songs, again written and composed by Han. What is utterly bewildering is within days, the exact same song is sold on multiple music platforms under a different ‘artist’ – remember SKZ Player is most of the time, free and only uploaded on Youtube?
At first, we are all wondering if JYPE suddenly decided to sell it on music platforms that we have always begged them to do, but then the artist name is different and there is absolutely no reason why Han should change his name into a stage name when he already also has one which is J.One (as in Jisung Han, Han is one in Korean).
JYPE released a statement of copyright infrigement on social media – which shows the other party did stole the whole song and sell it for profit. It is strange to me because it is the exact song.
We are not even talking about some parts of it being similar or inspired and such. It is just copy and paste. It is strange to me because the other party just asking to be sued, no?
I do not recall similar things happening before, but is there similar event where a kpop song is sold using another party’s name? Like literally stole the whole song and re-label the artist?