BLACKPINK’s Rosé is making headlines after officially withdrawing from the Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA), becoming the first K-pop singer in 22 years to do so.

According to KOMCA on the 20th, Rosé applied to terminate her copyright trust on October 31 last year. After the mandatory three-month grace period, her contract was officially canceled on January 31.

The last Korean artist to take this step was Seo Taiji back in April 2003. Now, Rosé has followed in his footsteps, making a major decision regarding her music rights.

The reason? It all comes down to double commission fees. Last September, Rosé signed an exclusive contract with Atlantic Records, a label under Warner Music Group.

Since she’s now actively promoting in the U.S., it was unnecessary to manage her copyrights separately in both Korea and the U.S. Moving forward, all of Rosé’s song copyrights will be handled by a U.S. publisher instead.

Meanwhile, BLACKPINK is gearing up for a massive new world tour in 2025! The group will kick things off with concerts at Goyang Sports Complex Main Stadium on July 5 and 6 before heading to 10 major cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, New York, Paris, Milan, Barcelona, London, and Tokyo.

With Rosé making big career moves and BLACKPINK preparing for another world tour, fans are excited to see what’s next.

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Sunmi is caught up in controversy after the NFT project she promoted made billions of KRW—only to lose most of its value, leaving investors frustrated.

According to Kyunghyang Shinmun on February 21, Sunmi, her agency, and a KOSDAQ-listed company launched the NFT collection Sunmiya Club in February 2022.

The project used blockchain technology to verify ownership of digital assets, turning illustrations inspired by Sunmi’s career into NFTs. Buyers were promised exclusive services to increase their investment value.

Thanks to Sunmi’s strong promotion, the NFTs were a huge success at first, selling out and making billions of KRW.

However, things took a turn when the NFT market crashed due to the Terra-Luna crisis and the bankruptcy of the U.S. crypto exchange FTX in late 2022.

By 2023, Sunmiya Club had stalled, and the once high-value NFTs dropped to just tens of thousands of KRW.

As investors faced major losses, some turned their frustration toward Sunmi. In response, the company behind the project stated, “We have fully followed the roadmap announced at the beginning and have continued operations.

The funds raised from the NFTs were used for operational costs and investments in a new platform launched last year.”

Despite the company’s defense, many are still questioning what went wrong and whether Sunmi will address the backlash.

Source: [1]