Here’s The Novel Way That SM Entertainment Nabs Staff Who Leak Their Music

SM Entertainment is one of the largest entertainment agencies in South Korea. They produce hundreds of songs each year! With such a huge amount of music being pumped out of the company, secrecy is of the utmost importance. They wouldn’t want an artist’s hard-earned comeback or debut to be ruined with a music leak, right? In order to prevent this from happening, the company has the most ingenious way of making sure they can nab the culprit.

On an episode of Someply, SHINee‘s Key showed the host around his company. They visited the AR team, where a staff was busy editing some music files for Taemin. It turns out, they were inserting special sounds at timed moments of the song. According to Key, this is a surefire way to catch people who leak new music. Unreleased music has to be sent out to several teams before the official drop. Key explained how they do this on the show.

오.. 오늘 첨알았던 음원 유출 출처 잡아낼 수 있는 엔터사의 방법

지구 끝까지 쫓아가야죠 pic.twitter.com/c5gvdCseOG

— [1of1=샤이니]민트곰 (@shineshinee0525) September 14, 2023

Broadcasting companies, dance teams, video directors, the list is endless! With so many people coming into contact with the secret file, the AR team sends a different version to each group. For example, a dance team could receive the music file with a sound effect inserted at the 5-second mark. On the other hand, the broadcasting company could receive a file with the sound at the 25-second mark. This helps the source of the leak be traced easily!

What a genius method! Despite this, some artists still face the disappointing occurrence. Read about the time NCT‘s album was leaked below.

Netizens Rally In Support Of NCT After Alleged Album Leak