Let’s learn a little bit about the album that you guys bought and kept in your holy shrine! The details written inside an album aren’t for aesthetic purposes only!

(Featuring DMUMT and some simple infos about music copyrights)

℗ is sound recording copyright symbol while © is copyright symbol. SM Entertainment owns the sound recording copyright for DMUMT, and the copyright of DMUMT album. Rephrased here, album.
2018; the year of the first publication of DMUMT. Distributed to the market by IRIVER CORP.

SMK 1035 is the album’s catalogue number.

℗ is what people often refer to copyright master; the copyright to the finished product. In this case, SM owns the mastered songs in DMUMT, not originals.

© is copyright to make and distribute the work; in this case is DMUMT album.

Let’s use the song that’s sadly under the controversy.

Lyrics, composers and arranger of the song at the top. Also known as songwriters and composers.

Important to have the name to submit to KOMCA. KOMCA handles music copyrights stuff in South Korea.

Let’s see the right column, Original title is Tempo; the original writers of the original version are as stated, the one who first publish this song first (demo) are under the original publishers.

These whole things are important to submit a composition copyright.

Composition copyright is the first copyright while making music, and SM doesn’t have any part in this because the composers are creating and recording the demo themselves.

These details are also needed to submit to KOMCA.

Sub-publishers are the one who handle things for original publishers outside of their original country. The original publishers aren’t from Korea companies, hence they’re appointing the sub-publishers to be the middle man for business purposes. (Royalties, marketing etc)

Once SM agreed and made some legal agreement with the original writers to use the demo of Tempo, they proceed to record the song properly with EXO using the copyrighted demo. Here, SM doesn’t buy composition copyright, they just made mutual agreement over the demo, profit wise.

Left column. Vocal direction; how to sing this part that part is directed by the said names. Background vocals are background vocals, recorded by the recording studios appointed by SM, digital editing is editing the various recordings of members into an acceptable rough track.

Engineered for mix is to fine tune the edited version just now and lastly the mixing is to mix and master the track, and finally finish the whole track into one polished track.

These details are required to submit the sound recording copyright.

And yes, both composition copyright and sound recording copyright are the essential copyrights to publish a song. You don’t want to know the copyright submitting process lol leave that to lawyers.

The artist made their own songs? They got both copyrights for themselves.

Sync in a simple word, a license. To make a new product from copyrighted items, producer of that product have to get the sync rights. To get sync rights, the producer must have approval from both parties; owners of composition copyright and owner of sound recording copyright.

Rejection from even one person in either party is enough to deny the license. And again, a song is often created by more than one composer.