South Korea’s Federation of Music Performers has reported a dramatic leap in international royalty income, underscoring the accelerating global popularity of K-pop not only for labels and stars, but for performers whose contributions often remain behind the scenes.
According to data released on Dec. 4, the organization’s overseas neighboring rights collections reached 1.34 billion won ($910,000) this year, a staggering 193 percent increase from last year’s 460 million won.
Neighboring rights are a type of protection similar to copyright for performances and recordings that sit alongside the original copyright for the musical composition.
The surge stems largely from a mutual management agreement struck last year with SoundExchange, the US-based collective rights management organization responsible for collecting digital performance royalties on behalf of performers and rights holders. As a result of this agreement alone, roughly 900 million won in additional performance royalties were collected and allocated to Korean performers.
Over the past year, the Korean organization and SoundExchange have worked to establish a standardized settlement infrastructure capable of matching usage information and digital reporting data across borders. The partnership now enables royalties generated through US satellite radio, webcasting and other digital audio services to be transferred to Korea and distributed directly to eligible performers.
gypark@heraldcorp.com
