Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
At a recent listening session for their fourth album FLOWERING, AKMU revealed that they’re planning on re-recording or remastering their old releases so that they can own their masters.
They explained that after they left YG Entertainment, their masters were kept by their former agency. AKMU had the option to try and buy them, but instead they are opting to record their existing songs again with their current band members to create a new version of the songs/albums and new masters. They can do this because they’ve (well, Chanhyuk) retained publishing rights on those songs, and thus they have the ability to recreate them. If that sounds familiar then it should, as I believe that’s what Taylor Swift has famously done with her (Taylor’s Version) tracks.
They’ve also said they’re already in the works of doing the whole catalog, so given that some of the AKMU songs are now 12 years old and that they’ve changed a lot in that time, there could also be fresh elements to those re-recordings. Should be interesting and it sounds like a lot of work, but I’m happy for them that they’re using their singer-songwriter status to take control.
