Chapter 48
LK Records.
“Ma bro.”
“...?”
At Big Joe’s call, Shotgun stiffly turned his head.
“What are we going to do? Last Mile, the song you released as ASD, isn’t doing very well.”
“...”
“It hasn’t even charted, and the streams are still crawling along the bottom, right? Just as I expected. I told you that song had no commercial appeal.”
As expected, the results were proving him right.
“I already told you before, but do whatever you want with ASD. Use it whenever you want to clear your head after working as Shotgun.”
“!”
“You need at least one outlet like that.”
“?!”
“Well, I could help if you need it. Lend you a studio, maybe help with mastering?”
Wow, this seriously hurts my pride. The song is getting some word of mouth, at least...
Park Geon was getting thoroughly provoked.
At this point, he wanted to gather his courage and say just one thing to the rancher.
Really, just one—
“Why?”
“...Thank you.”
“Right. You do everything on the ASD side alone anyway. Mixing, mastering—if you ever need extra hands, say the word. I can assign some of our people to help whenever you want.”
“...Yes.”
...No.
After work, Park Geon headed straight to J-Rackz’s studio.
Jay was sprawled across the sofa, fast asleep.
Someone had already ruined his mood today, and Park Geon had been thinking about working on Lil D’s album here when—
“Oh, Jayden Cole released a single.”
J-Rackz said it in passing.
A major-label rapper signed to Pacific Music Group.
“Oh. Play it.”
J-Rackz connected his phone to the Bluetooth speaker.
The moment the intro began—
“...?”
Park Geon felt an intense sense of déjà vu.
J-Rackz, on the other hand, nodded along and said,
“Oh, this is pretty good. The beat is fresh. But something about the structure feels familiar.”
Unlike J-Rackz, Park Geon knew the moment the intro started.
“...These bastards plagiarized Last Mile.”
Jay shot upright from his sleep.
“What?!!”
“Whew. Listen to it yourself.”
Park Geon decided to wash his face first while he organized his thoughts about what to do.
Once he reached the bathroom, he turned the faucet on full blast.
Shhhhh—
The first step was reporting this to Morrison & Reed.
But the other side would never admit to plagiarism willingly.
The moment they admitted it, they would expose themselves to damages, reputational harm, and grounds for a chain of lawsuits.
The ending was obvious.
They would drag it out.
Disputes over evidence, expert evaluations, appeals.
Like plagiarism disputes usually did, it would not be strange for the case to drag on for years.
Still, if we win a few years from now, maybe it’ll be a jackpot. But what am I supposed to do about music in the meantime? Ha, this is annoying.
He roughly wiped his face with a towel and came out of the bathroom.
“...?”
Jay was staring intently at his laptop.
He was typing something, but his fingers were moving too fast to see.
Tap-tap-tap-tap! Tap-tap! Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!
Park Geon walked closer and looked at the screen.
It was Reddit.
[I found this on my girlfriend’s phone. What the hell is this???]
Girlfriend?
Despite the title, the post itself began with an apology for the clickbait and then explained the plagiarism similarities.
Park Geon’s mouth fell open without realizing it.
“!”
The moment he saw the post, something flashed in his mind.
What was a major label truly afraid of?
Its stock price falling.
Advertisers pulling out.
Damage to the images of its artists.
In the end, reputation.
That was probably why they refused to admit plagiarism in the first place.
In court, they could burn through lawyers and hold out for years, but the moment public opinion turned against them, they could wave the white flag within days.
The other side had mountains of things to protect.
Which meant the fire had to be lit on the internet before the courtroom.
...But this guy is way too good at clickbait. This isn’t the vibe of someone who’s only been using online communities for a day or two.
Park Geon suddenly remembered laughing and chatting with Jay about Reddit memes when they first met at the café.
“Jay, what are you doing?”
“Oh, this? Nothing much.”
He spoke as though it were routine.
He even had three accounts.
Each one had posted in a different community, and all three had completely different activity histories.
“Are all of these your accounts?”
“Hyung, of course. If you want anything to work on Reddit, you have to build account karma first. If you post from a new account, people treat it as promotion and bury it immediately.”
I stared at Jay.
Curled up inside his hoodie.
Fingers moving without pause.
This bastard... he’s a total forum addict! And an account with this much karma is practically famous on Reddit.
Jay continued typing as he spoke.
“The key is creating an argument. If one side says something is right, the opposing side automatically appears. I play that side too with an alt account.”
Another comment was open on the screen.
Jay had deliberately used one of his alt accounts to leave a rebuttal.
—Honestly, isn’t it kind of a stretch to call this plagiarism?
└There are tons of songs with similar structures.
└By this logic, every song in the world is plagiarism.
Under that, another one of Jay’s alt accounts jumped in and tore the argument apart.
—LMAO, by that logic, it’s always legal for major labels to take structures from unknown artists.
└The original came out three weeks earlier.
└Listen to the intro kick placement yourself. It’s 99% the same.
└If you think this is coincidence, you’re either insanely innocent or insanely stupid.
He had created both sides of the argument by himself, writing comments for both camps and growing the fight.
Reddit’s algorithm pushed posts upward when they received more comments.
Jay understood exactly how the system rewarded larger arguments with more exposure.
In the middle of an intense keyboard battle, Jay saw the latest comment and sighed.
“Ah, but thankfully, there’s another forum addict using the same kind of clickbait as me—”
“That’s me.”
“?”
“...I just posted that.”
Their eyes met.
They could see the same thing in each other’s gaze.
...We really are the same kind of nerd!
We nodded solemnly, sat side by side, and began hammering at our laptops.
Tap-tap-tap-tap! Tap-tap!
[Suspicion that a major-label employee found an unknown song and handed it to their own artist. What happens if this is true?]
“You deliberately avoid directly calling it plagiarism and make people curious instead? Not bad, Jay.”
But I could not lose either.
[Am I the only one who doesn’t think this is plagiarism?]
I deliberately wrote a title full of contrarian energy.
It was designed to draw rebuttals, and the body of the post was aggressive too.
“Hyung, you’re pretty good yourself.”
“I’ve got years of experience. Wait, is this one you?”
“Yeah, I just posted it.”
“...”
Tap-tap-tap! Tap-tap! Tap-tap-tap!
And J-Rackz, watching them...
“...”
...had a blank expression.
Two Asian men were sitting curled up side by side on the sofa, hammering madly at their laptops.
Their postures were almost identical.
Backs curved into C-shapes.
Forward heads.
Occasionally muttering to themselves.
Those two... look so fucking happy right now. Like this is their real job.
Three hours later—
“My post passed fifty thousand views.”
“Look at this comment. People are going crazy asking if a major-label employee came here to defend them.”
“Hyung, your post blew up too.”
After that, J-Rackz fell asleep.
And when he woke up the next morning—
“?!”
The two of them were still in the same positions, typing on their laptops.
Are these guys insane?
Even more surprisingly, one of the plagiarism-related posts had finally reached Reddit’s front page.
The topic had begun spreading on Twitter too.
People were even uploading side-by-side comparison videos to YouTube.
J-Rackz wiped the drool from his mouth and clicked his tongue.
“Man... you guys are seriously terrifying.”
Pacific Music Group headquarters.
“W-what the hell is this?”
Travis glared at the monitor.
Just two days ago, there had been no plagiarism controversy at all.
An unknown song with fewer than a thousand streams.
A song no one cared about.
Then suddenly, several well-known Reddit accounts began lighting fires.
It was not just hip-hop communities.
The topic broke out simultaneously across multiple communities, and arguments raged endlessly in every comment section.
“Fuck!”
Meanwhile, the situation was getting worse.
The hashtag #LastMile had begun trending in real time on Twitter.
“Team Leader, the CEO is calling for you.”
Travis’s face went pale.
When he opened the CEO’s office door and stepped inside, the CEO was standing in front of the wide window.
Even from his silhouette, Travis could tell he was in a bad mood.
“What exactly is going on?”
The CEO turned around.
“Reddit is saying we copied a song by an unknown rapper, and now there’s even a hashtag trending on Twitter. Do you know where I heard about it?”
“From our legal team...?”
“My wife.”
Travis closed his mouth.
The CEO put his tablet down on the desk.
“I heard they even called us with a plagiarism complaint. Why wasn’t I told about that?”
“At the time... I judged that it wasn’t worth reporting.”
“Something not worth reporting is now trending on Twitter? Huh!”
“...I apologize.”
“What good is apologizing! Bring me a response plan immediately. Gather the entire outside counsel team and call in PR too. I want a draft today. Like all legal disputes, this will become a long-term battle.”
Travis bowed and was about to leave the office when—
Knock, knock.
The secretary opened the door.
Her expression was rigid.
“Sir.”
“What is it?”
“...DJ Cabin just posted something on Twitter.”
“What?!”
“He publicly shouted out the song and declared his support for ASD.”
Silence descended.
The last bit of color drained from Travis’s face.
“Why the hell is DJ Cabin suddenly involved?!”
[@DJKabin]
[I just listened to Delivery Man’s Last Mile for the thirtieth time. The song puts the honest lyrics of a low-level gang delivery man over a beat that is as addictive as cocaine.
It’s insane. This song is insane. The beat structure, the tension build, the way the verse breathes—it is all art.
And to the people who stole this sound and put a major-label tag on it—we are all watching. The streets are watching. The culture is watching.
I support ASD.]
Three minutes after the tweet went live, it had two thousand retweets.
Ten minutes later, ten thousand.
DJ Cabin.
A legend of West Coast hip-hop.
The man whose recent comeback rumors had shaken the entire industry.
And now Cabin had publicly shouted out an unknown producer’s song and taken a side in the plagiarism controversy.
The internet exploded.
—DJ Cabin personally spoke about the plagiarism controversy?
└This is fucking huge.
└Clicked the link and listened to the original... holy shit.
└Why am I only hearing this now?
└Apparently it had like five hundred streams.
—If Cabin publicly supports them, doesn’t that basically confirm the plagiarism?
└Cabin recognized it musically.
—Just listened to the original.
└????
└Why did this only have five hundred streams?
└And a worse copy of this charted?
└It gets more addictive every time I listen.
Cabin’s tweet was like pouring gasoline onto a spark.
Articles began appearing one after another.
[DJ Cabin Enters “Major Label Plagiarism Allegations” Controversy Directly: “The Culture Is Watching”]
—Never seen Cabin publicly take someone’s side before.
└He barely even uses social media.
└And this guy personally tweeted that he listened thirty times?
└At this point it’s musically undeniable.
—The original song’s streams are exploding right now lol.
└They tried to plagiarize it and ended up promoting the original.
Meanwhile, at Pacific Music Group headquarters—
Cabin’s tweet was displayed on Travis’s monitor.
The retweet count jumped by thousands every time he refreshed the page.
“How... how did it get this far...?”
The atmosphere inside the CEO’s office was heavy.
“Why is DJ Cabin interfering with our business?!”
“Well... apparently he happened to hear the other song and liked it.”
“By coincidence? He heard it by coincidence and publicly attacked our company?”
The CEO pressed hard against his temple.
His stock alerts had already gone off twice.
The company’s shares were down 3.8 percent in the morning alone.
Normally, the idea of a music company’s stock price moving because of one plagiarism controversy would have been laughable.
But once Cabin’s name became attached to it, everything changed.
The PR and legal teams were immediately summoned.
Someone cautiously spoke.
“...Perhaps it would be better to admit it quickly and pursue a settlement—”
“Are you insane?”
The legal representative cut him off.
“If we admit it once, it becomes precedent. Do you have any idea how many tracks we’ve created based on ‘inspiration’ over the years? If a chain of lawsuits starts, the company will stagger.”
“...”
“Besides, the other side is an unknown artist with streams in the three digits. Whether a musical structure is even clearly protected by copyright is debatable. We can insist it was independently created all the way to the end.”
That became the conclusion.
They would not admit plagiarism.
They would hold the line with claims of inspiration and coincidence.
Their public statement would be aggressive instead.
They would frame the controversy as baseless attacks against a successful artist.
Public opinion?
Noise always faded with the season.
The public would move on to the next controversy soon enough, and all the lawyers had to do was drag things out until then.
That was how major labels had always won in this industry.
The next day, Pacific released its official statement.
[Pacific Music Group: “Jayden Cole’s New Song Was Created Independently... Plagiarism Allegations Are Baseless Defamation”]
A dry laugh escaped me.
They still won’t admit it?
Public opinion had tilted this far, and they still planned to refuse to bend.
Well, it was not an unexpected move.
Textbook major-label stonewalling.
I had seen fights like this countless times.
Then there was no choice.
We would go the straightforward route.
I would formally report it to Morrison & Reed and pursue a copyright-infringement case.
Gather evidence of substantial similarity, request expert analysis, and begin a long and exhausting legal battle...
Just as I steeled myself—
Bzzzt.
My phone vibrated.
The moment I saw the name on the screen, I swallowed without realizing it.
Big Joe?!
Suppressing the ominous feeling rising inside me, I pressed the answer button.
“...Hello?”
—Yeah. I wrapped it up.