Elsewhere Music Publishing launched

As of today, August 14, 2026, I launched Elsewhere Music Publishing as a publisher, to protect the copyrights of some of my label's artists. It's mostly for my elsesong artists who are singer-songwriters.
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Recently, I discovered a disturbing fact: 22 years ago, one of my label artists wrote a song that was unlawfully used by an American singer and included on his CD. My artist sent out a demo of the song in the early 2000s, which seemed to circulate and reach the singer, who recorded the song for his own album and released it without permission.

At least my artist's name was credited as the songwriter on the CD, but he was never notified about it and never received royalties or compensation. He found out by chance while searching for his name online after the CD was released, and he was completely shocked.

The singer who infringed on my label artist’s song wasn’t well known. However, his CD was released by four labels in four countries in 2004, including Italy, Spain, and Japan. It seems to have gained some popularity in Japan around the time after being released by one of the top three major record companies. The song that this singer illegally recorded and released is still on YouTube and streaming services. My artist couldn't do anything about this case since he couldn't afford the expensive music copyright attorney fees, so he had to let it go.

To help prevent such cases from happening in the future, I decided to become a music publisher (and register to ASCAP). My goal as a publisher is not to pursue profit but to study music copyright law thoroughly and closely monitor it to ensure that the rights of my label’s artists are not violated. If any royalties are generated from an artist’s work, I intend to give the artist a large share of them.

I myself have experienced this helpless anger in similar copyright infringement cases: when I was a child, my late father’s designs were stolen by a young designer who visited our house, and on another occasion, by a major advertising agency—and although both became nationwide hits, my father never received a single royalty. All he could do was accept his unfortunate situation and swallow the bitterness, as my label's artist did.

In this morally bankrupt era, I sincerely hope that artists in every genre will not have to endure such painful experiences, even if only a little less often. And through my publishing business, I hope to protect my label's artists from such cases as much as possible while helping them earn royalties from sync use licenses and more.
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