Allow me to shed some light on how music production works in a business setting - a thread https://twitter.com/sexiuaI/status/1269627037246869504

A sync is basically a music license that you sell. So the original producers sent the song to SM and they paid the $500 for the sync.

There are 5 producers on the song, and in total, there are 9 people who worked on the track and/or lyrics, including Mark and Taeyong

The second you sell the license, that's all the money you get.

Unless you write in your contact to get a % of royalties, you only get the sync.

Tiffany has the skill and work ethic to do music professionally, a privilege not a lot of musicians get to have.

This is why I only have one other writer I work with.
It gets messy, and the fee has to be split.

I've given away so many tracks for "exposure" I would've loved to have gotten $66 for a wildly popular song.
It means I can charge more the next time a company approaches me

She signed that contact. Or her publisher did, that stated she get a percentage of the sync.

It's legal, and SM did nothing wrong by the law.

Morally, it's a different story, but SM is a company, not a human.

I have been approached by two companies, but I turned them down because we couldn't agree on terms.

Depending on the track, my minimum is $300 for a fully produced song. They couldn't agree to that, so I walked away

The more I'm looking into this, the more I think something is going on with her publisher