Saturday, March 23, 2013

UMG Blocks KPop Videos, People Lose Their Shit

Today I logged onto my Twitter account (shameless plug @zakubot) and was puzzled to see people agitated over the blocking of music videos on Youtube. Looking for myself, I found out that UMG (aka Universal Music Group) had blocked some KPop music videos from CUBE Entertainment on the grounds of copyright infringement.

Normal enough, but the kicker was that these blocked videos were all from the official artists' pages. The plot thickens when you remember that UMG Korea distributes CUBE's music. DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN....

MTE, Jiyoon.
Once you get to the bottom of it however, it's not as bad as some people are making it out to be. As of this writing, only 4Minute's Volume Up, GNA's 2Hot, Troublemaker, some B2ST MVs (don't really care bout them so I didn't check), and some BTOB (REALLY don't care about them) MVs were hit. The majority of their catalogs are intact so it's not the end of the world for CUBE stans, let alone KPop stans in general.

But this is the KPop fandom we're talking about, so this was naturally blown way way waaaaaaaaaay out of proportion by Twitter, Tumblr, and KPop forums. This is the tweet I was talking about when I logged onto Twitter.


Ok. Exaggeration was a bit of an understatement. If there was ever a need for a word for something more exaggerated than an exaggeration, I would use it here. I don't think I need to tell you exactly what is wrong with the whole rallying cry poster, so let's just all laugh at the ludicrous claim that UMG is racist for blocking KPop videos. Or that UMG wants to allegedly keep KPop for Koreans. Or that the success of KPop is only because of international fans. Or that without international attention, KPop is only liked by a small number of Koreans.

It gets better. "UMG" happens to be trending on Twitter right now, and the response to this alleged persecution of the KPop stan is quite frankly disgusting. I'd screencap and post some of it, but it's better if you see for yourself.

EDIT: Not even Wikipedia is safe. Seriously people. This actually happened, check the editing history for yourself. l0l

Click to EXPAND
These people are acting like it's the end of the world, but quite frankly it's hard to muster up sympathy if you consider what Japanese music fans have had to put up with for ages. You can't even upload (for example) an Amuro Namie PV without it getting taken down an hour later these days. KPoppers have had it so much easier.


At any rate, no one seems to be making an official statement on what's going on. Nope, not even Allkpop or Soompi. Suck our dicks, AKF brings the real breaking news and shit. We'll keep ya posted.

27 comments:

  1. the GazettE's pv's kept getting taken down, i distinctly recall a while ago one of their videos was uploaded under the title 'erotic chicken nugget'

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    1. LOLOL I haven't watched GazettE's MVs in a long time. Do they really keep getting taken down?

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    2. idk they haven't released anything good since 'pldege', so i don't keep up with them anymore :\

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    3. but yeah i used to work for a visual kei blog and videos from the bigger bands used to be really hard to keep for more than a few days.

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  2. Hahaha real breaking news. Maybe allkpop or soompi could even source this article .

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  3. Ur link... smh. Why am reading tweets abootrealtime

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  4. Kpop MVs aren't that hard to find if one is removed. Just use the search bar and you can usually find countless other clones of the same MV/song. And if you can't, there's ALWAYS illegal downloading.

    I also agree wholeheartedly about jpop, there's almost no PVs/songs on Youtube, and if there are, they're difficult to find, under a different name, etc, so they won't be removed by Avex/whatever big ass corporate record company. The only things close to Jpop PVs I can find on youtube are usually under avex's youtube channel and only a minute or so. In the end, they're pretty useless and only used to push CD+DVD sales. Once again, another reason to resort to illegal downloading, or heaven forbid, actually purchasing the 30 dollar single/60 dollar album.

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    Replies
    1. I think people are just bitching cause all the views/comments are gone, not because of some misguided protest against "censorship" or "racism."

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    2. Really, youtube used to be riddled with copyrighted content, but then along came the Auto Detection copyright system, google, and VEVO, and so went millions of videos.

      Semi-related:
      What's really irritating me about youtube is that they use ads in their shitty iOS app. So I recently switched to an alternative app, and gone were the annoying quality lags and adverts.

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    3. Do views really matter to them that much? I mean, it's nice when a video you like hits over 100,000 or whatever views but is it really all that important?

      Also, there's tons of flamewars in the comments anyway. I prefer to stay away from that section, unless I want to comment and say something pertaining to the video. Or are in search of something funny.

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  5. That gurl haz such cute teeth! But yeah, its also hard to download free jap music online, even on 4shared :( .i.usually have to settle for less than 4 mb, but who am i to complain...

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    1. the girl is cute, with them barracuda teeth...adorable.
      And yea, japanese music are harder to look for online compared to kpop for some damn reason. Years ago, shit was so easy...

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    2. Since when sharks are considered cute? o_O

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    3. Yeah, I find it much easier to find new releases than old releases.... 4shared actually has the most JP stuff, or maybe Mediafire/Mirrorcreator/Multiupload. But even then, most of the time, if you go to a site that specializes in JP/KR/Azn music, you have to go through a shitty adf.ly link anyway, and adfly hates my adblock :I so I rarely download anything anymore, Japanese, Korean, or otherwise.

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  6. screw those other pinoys, as long as APink are still there

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  7. what happen is the UMG is scare the kpop is going to take over the world that all

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  8. I'm 2003 Jmusic fan and all my Jcrap I always searched for... so uh, they should stop being lazy. Ain't that hard to find them.

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  9. l0lz UMG said on twitter that it was just a glitch. It's ridiculous that people were claiming it 'racist' #GIVEUSKPOP

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  10. I remember the time I could see any japanese vids I wanted. But now I can't find shit anymore on youtube.

    Not sure why people would delete it...it's free promotion.

    I think they've forgotten--music videos ARE commercials for the songs.

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    Replies
    1. Japanese companies still rely on the DVDs that contain music videos to sell. Yes, Japan is stuck in the 90s with their business models and its killing them. Embrace technology, don't fight it. It's kind of odd to say this about Japan since they were the most technologically advanced nation 20 years ago lol.

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    2. So why should they have full PVs up on YT to view if they obviously sell via DVD/Blu-ray? We all know JApan only thinks about their domestic consumers so why should they consider their international ones? but that's why they have previews of the videos on YT. I can't get that mad at them for still wanting to make money at the most they can.

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    3. Yaebakoku has been declining since this "90's" era.

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    4. @Minah Japan is the #2 music industry for the time being. They don't need to give a shit about overseas fans. Once their population starts declining rapidly (and it will, Japan has a very low birth rate and their economy is going to contract big time), then they'll start caring about international fans. But we'll be in our 30s to 40s by then anyway.

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  11. apparently UMG was only blocking particular CUBE videos so that people would go to the artist's VEVO page. i.e. instead of looking for Volume Up on 4minuteofficial, people have to go to the 4Minute VEVO page.
    I have two things to say on this issue:
    1) TOO MANY FANS OVERREACT. period.
    2) it was bad on UMG's part to suddenly start blocking the videos without telling anyone. but oh well, I guess that's business ^^;

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