All right. Let’s buckle up folks, because I have some questions to ask, all of it related to the crazy world of K-pop (and its many… many subgenres) and how others would handle these.
1. Bootlegs vs Recordings. Does the bootleg category include individual recordings of performances broadcast, such as covers or songs that don’t have ‘official’ releases?
Examples:
- Ateez’s performance on Kingdom of Rhythm Ta, a cover of iKon’s song of the same name - ripping the audio from the performance ([풀버전] ♬ 리듬 타 (The Awakening of Summer) - 에이티즈(ATEEZ) - YouTube) to listen to on my own, is this technically a bootleg or just a recording? Or should I bother with this at all since it was only a broadcast performance, which could be analogous to a live recording from the radio and not everyone has access to my file which I trimmed to remove dead air gaps? This was one of three performances on this particular episode of Kingdom: Legendary War, so should I add the other two in a collection, or an associated recording? (The other two were BTOB performing Back Door, and Stray Kids performing 기도 (Prayer, also called I’ll Be Your Man from the subtitle) these two groups swapping songs for the requirements of the round of challenges.)
- Dreamcatcher’s cover of Chakra’s 한 (multiple translations, depends on which translator you’re asking, Dreamcatcher (드림캐쳐) - 한 (Come A Come) [Music Bank/2019.10.18] - YouTube) again, a special broadcast only performance, similar to the example of Ateez above.
- This actually has a lot of similar examples from shows such as Immortal Songs, Yoo Heeyeol’s Sketchbook, and Sugarman2.
2. Random one-off collaborations of artists, and artist collaborations made through shows.
Examples:
- Again, Kingdom: Legendary War related question. For the ‘No Limit’ episodes, the first section was a collaboration between 3 groups under a group name - Mayfly and It’s One, where they competed in 3 categories - rap, vocal, dance - where both of the rap units created original songs… but were never released even though master copies exist. (Yes I’m still salty about this, even a year later.) Well, okay - again, this relates up to the previous question - is this a bootleg? a recording? a work? but this also runs up against the fact that the unit performances only had certain members of each group, not the entire group itself. How is this handled in the database? Is this a ‘new artist,’ or is it added to an existing group, or is this needing to be added to each individual member of the unit as a… again, bootleg/recording/work?
- Knowing Bros/Men on a Mission (this is what Netflix calls it, actual translation is ‘Ask bros anything’) collaboration ‘group’ between two of the hosts, Kim Heechul and Min Kyunghoon (yes, this is last name - first name nomenclature that I will use for Korean artists, who introduce themselves this way) under a sort of variable collaboration name of Universe Cowards/Universe Hipsters (wiki article: Universe Cowards - Wikipedia) they use to differentiate between what “genre” they’re doing for their song. Sweet Dreams is more of a ballad-type song, so they use the Universe Cowards, but for Hanryang, they used the Universe Hipsters name. Would this be considered an alias issue? Also, again, how to connect the group name to the individual artists? Heechul is a member of Super Junior, Kyunghoon is a member of Buzz, or should it just be under the “group” name (same as above with the Kingdom unit performances)? I ask because I noticed that in Queendom or Mixnine releases, the unit name is given as artist, but is this the case for every example?
3. Unofficial group units.
Listen, if you’ve heard of BTOB, you’ve heard of how crazy and crazy talented they are. Well for those of you who don’t know, two of the vocal members of this group decide to dress up (down?) in the occasional leotard, or flashy black shirts and colored boots and toy axes as their ‘alter-egos’ of Gold and Silver Axe (금도끼 & 은도끼 (KR) is their… subunit? name maybe?) and sing (amazingly well). They supposedly had plans for a trot style album, which was interrupted by their mandatory military service, and the album was either never completed, or completed and never released, no one is sure. However, they have performed what would have/could be the title track twice - once on a TV show and the second time at a K-pop concert when they suddenly had to improvise when another member was diagnosed with Covid not too long before the concert was being held. Would this be an unofficial release with the possibility of an actual release? A bootleg? A recording? Also would this subunit be added as a new artist?
Thanks for your time and answers. If anything is too confusing, please ask, I’ll try to find a different way to explain.
Playing with Paint (lit. translation, but Mnet calls it ‘Colours’ for an English title in the thumbnail) - Mayfly (Rap Unit: Minhyuk, Bang Chan, Changbin, Han, Hongjoong) is how the title/description is) so would that align with your example in option 1? Or would option 2 be more applicable as they don’t mention which groups those 5 are from and the unit name isn’t a mashup?