Alleged “Evidence” Of Song Ha Yea’s Chart Manipulation Surfaces And Shocks K-Pop Fans

On January 8, 2020, South Korea’s Right Solid Party revealed an alleged picture of what is vocalist Song Ha Yea‘s agency PLUSMedia Entertainment manipulating the chart for her track “Your Regards”.

The picture — which is actually a capture from a video — shows two monitors streaming Song Ha Yea’s “Your Regards”. In explanation, the Right Solid Party revealed that PLUSMedia Entertainment’s marketing partner NSTAR Company tried to manipulate the chart this way. The party also pointed out after May 25, 2019, the date which the video was taken, Song Ha Yea soared on music charts.

In November 2019, when Block B’s Park Kyung named a few artists and asked them not to manipulate the charts, these musicians sued Park Kyung. However, of those named, Song Ha Yea did manipulate the charts, as this evidence shows. The prosecution and police should be looking into Song Ha Yea’s company PLUSMedia Entertainment and its marketing partner NSTAR Company, not Park Kyung. Manipulation like this is not fair and harms the society.

— Right Solid Party Representative

When the party announced its plan to take legal action against the agency and the marketing partner for such illegal activity, PLUSMedia claimed that it “does not know anything about the picture”. In addition, the agency then claimed that the photo was used to threaten the artist back in September 2019.

We have never attempted to manipulate the chart. We also do not know anything about what is happening in the picture. In fact, in September of 2019, we received threats about the video related to this matter.

— PLUSMedia Entertainment

To this, Korean netizens showed complete disbelief. Most of them pointed out that the agency’s “argument” that it was “threatened” does not have any logic.

• “If the agency really didn’t mean to manipulate the chart and was threatened about it, they should have called the police at the time. Now that the evidence is out, they want to play the victim?”
• “I don’t get it, they were threatened about… her music being streamed…???”
• “So they got threatened by this party, but they’re going to sue Park Kyung??”

Then, the marketing partner NSTAR Company tried to clarify the situation. It revealed PLUSMedia outsourced marketing to them 6 years ago.

We helped marketing for PLUSMedia Entertainment around 6 years ago. We are not involved with Song Ha Yea in anyway now. NSTAR Company has actually went out of business 5-6 years ago.

— NSTAR Company

NSTAR Company also explained that the picture in question comes from when they “tested” the streaming feature of an application.

The video comes from our streaming test of an app player that is commonly used for K-Pop fandoms. The original video shows the test being done for different artists. Only Song Ha Yea’s part was leaked and used against her. The test opened 60 NoxPlayer apps and streamed music to see how it goes. Please also note that this method will actually block a MelOn account within 2-3 days for signing in from multiple IPs. Also, the test revealed that streaming this way will cost an unreasonable amount of money, thus an inefficient way of marketing.

— NSTAR Company

Though NSTAR company warned that they will take legal action against those who continue to falsely accuse them for manipulating the chart using the leaked video, Korean netizens grow even more suspicious of both PLUSMedia Entertainment and NSTAR Company for sharing contradicting statements.

• “I guess these days streaming tests are done with dozens of IDs per computer, huh? Lmao.”
• “If they shut down 6 years ago, why are they testing anything with a recent release?”
• “Did they just say that’s how fandoms stream…?”
• “That’s obviously testing how to manipulate the chart. Lol. The agency and the marketing company need to talk first and get their stories straight.”
• “Who in the world streams like that?”
• “Why does streaming need to be tested? Especially by a viral marketing company? And that’s not how fandoms do streaming.”
• “Why do we need to test out streaming again?”

Meanwhile, of the other artists whom Block B‘s Park Kyung named back in November 2019, VIBE continue to plead innocent, as does Song Ha Yea.

VIBE’s Yoon Min Soo Pleads He’s Innocent At The 9th Gaonchart Music Awards