“The music label mainly hopes that musicians and event organizers will respect intellectual property rights and contractual obligations when performing the copyrighted works of others,” stated HIM’s legal letter.
It cited the example of S.H.E. (the label’s former girl group where Tien belonged)’s performance of the song “Seventeen” at the Golden Melody Awards in 2019, saying that the Ministry of Culture had asked in advance to obtain the authorization.
Tien and her affiliates, Pourquoi Pas Music and A Tune Music, did not negotiate a licensing deal beforehand, the letter showed, adding that “the artist and event organizers are well aware of how copyright works.”
“HIM wanted to go after Tien so publicly may indicate some bad blood between the two — i.e., Tien’s concert team may have assumed HIM would have demanded ‘too much’ money (i.e., more than they wanted to pay), knowing that most of Tien’s fan-favourite songs would be within their portfolio,” Eastwood says. “To indicate that this was not the case, HIM cited to the authorization they granted for S.H.E. to perform ‘Seventeen’ back in June 2019. It seems reasonable that the compensation for the September performances will simply be negotiated between Tien’s new management and HIM. In the big scheme of things, both HIM and Tien will probably make more money if she and S.H.E. continued to perform their old hits.”
Johnny Chan