Management companies and associations are working together to address the lack of fair profit distribution over idols’ music show fan cams and other content.

On July 1, it was announced that the Korea Music Content Association, Korea Management Federation, and Korea Entertainment Producers’ Association have filed a request with the Fair Trade Commission for the establishment of a standard contract regarding the use of videos of artists.

It would realistically be difficult for individual management companies to request that networks define the limits of the usage permissions for videos of their artists. For that reason, they’ve asked the Fair Trade Commission to create a standard contract and guide the networks in adopting its use.

When idols appear on music shows, they do so without any conventional contract signed between their management company and the network. For many years it’s been seen that a network holds the copyright to the videos filmed for its music show, which hasn’t been a problem since idols go on the show to be broadcast on television.

However, an issue has emerged as times have changed and people access content in different ways than they used to. Rather than watching a music show episode on television, people are now more likely to watch music shows through streaming media services like YouTube. Recently, music shows produce and monetize additional content by uploading clipped videos of the artists performing to YouTube or selling unaired videos or footage from pre-recordings to news agencies. Videos of individual artists performing (known as “fan cams”) are also sold separately to businesses.

Since the singers and management companies cannot claim their rights even though it’s a video of the singers themselves performing on the show, this has caused a conflict between them and the networks. One network even evoked criticism by asking a management company to wave portrait rights so they could resell a video.

The associations’ request for a standard contract is aiming to regulate the ways in which networks can use the videos they’ve filmed, requiring prior consent if they want to use clips in ways other than broadcasting.

The Korea Music Content Association’s secretary general Choi Kwang Ho stated, “We’ve requested the establishment of these terms to create a healthy business relationship between networks and management companies.”

Newsen reports that an insider from the music industry stated, “It won’t be easy to change the networks’ practices, but we’re hoping that this can become the start of the K-pop content market mutually growing together through fair contracts.”

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