Maybe I was too quick to laud Billboard’s Hot 100 K-Pop chart … Both CJ Music and Soribada have been accused of illegally selling K-pop and other Korean music internationally. Worse, they sold much of that music on the cheap, for as little as 6 cents/song, screwing the artists in the process.
This is hardly the first time this has happened — it seems like half the Korean music available on iTunes is not supposed to be there (especially the classic rock), thanks to some, uh, “overenthusiastic” distributors who would decide that they could sell someone’s music internationally. But now there is some noise that this latest scandal might have some legs … and might actually lead to some consequences. Expect to hear some news in the next few days.
Lord knows the Korean music industry needs to be cleaned up… but I’ll believe it when it happens.
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