Korea Music Copyright Association Protests Pay TV PP Industry's Opaque Music Royalty "Settlements in the Dark"

"99% of Japanese broadcasters submit usage records"

Korea Music Copyright Association. Provided by the Korea Music Copyright Association.

The Korea Music Copyright Association has criticized the pay TV program provider (PP) industry's opaque practices in settling music copyright fees and has urged them to submit detailed usage records.

On February 11, the association pointed out that most PP companies have failed to fulfill their obligation to submit music usage records, resulting in a deeply entrenched structure of so-called "settlements in the dark."

Under the multiple-collective-management system, the key to settling copyright fees is calculating the "music copyright management ratio." This refers to the proportion of music, among all music used, that is managed by a particular collective. The association explained that users must submit their detailed music usage records to calculate an accurate ratio, but in reality this is not happening, except for a very small number of channels.

The three terrestrial broadcasters and the general programming channels spent 10 years in consultation before establishing the Broadcast Music Monitoring Operation Committee (BROMIS). Since 2024, they have been settling copyright fees based on actual usage data. The Korea Music Copyright Association criticized that the PP industry, which has the largest number of operators, is taking a passive stance not only on submitting data but also on participating in monitoring.

The association cited the responses of interest groups such as the Korea Broadcast Channel Provider Association and the Korea Cable TV Association as a major problem. It argued that, under the pretext of protecting the interests of their member companies, these groups are delaying the introduction of a transparent settlement system. Even though the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism proposed a mediation plan based on channel-by-channel sampling, this too has been rejected.

The association also claimed that the management ratios asserted by the PP industry are lower than the ratios obtained through monitoring that the association funded at its own expense. It suspects that data are being withheld in order to pay lower fees than the actual amount of usage would require. As this distorted structure continues, in which copyright collectives bear monitoring costs that exceed the amounts they collect, the damage to creators is growing.

In Japan, 99% of broadcasters submit complete music usage records to the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC). Global online video services (OTT) such as Netflix are also operating transparent systems.

The Korea Music Copyright Association stressed, "If the pay TV PP industry continues to abandon its responsibilities and obligations, it will lose competitiveness in both the domestic and global content markets."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.