JYP Entertainment is suing music distribution company OneSync Media and its CEO, Miles Gaines, for copyright infringement.
The K-pop company alleges that the defendants copied a track performed by Stray Kids member HAN (Han Ji-sung) from YouTube and uploaded it to streaming services under the artist name ‘yungzzz’ without permission.
The complaint was filed last Wednesday (November 4) in the US District Court for the Central District of California, in Los Angeles. It can be read in full here.
The recording at the center of the case is back to life, which JYP says it first made public on May 9 as a pre-release music video on its official YouTube channel.
The complaint notes that YouTube Premium subscribers were able to save the track to their devices at the time.
“JYPE posted a pre-release version of back to life on YouTube, and Defendants quickly copied the track wholesale…,” the complaint states. “After copying the track, Defendants removed the copyright management information… attributing it to HAN and JYPE and replaced it with false information attributing performance, authorship, and copyright ownership to ‘yungzzz.’
“Defendants then uploaded the ‘yungzzz’ track to music distribution services to be posted on Spotify, Apple Music/iTunes, YouTube, YouTube Music, Instagram, and TikTok so that they could profit from the track performed by HAN and stolen from JYPE.”
Copyright management information covers the details identifying a recording’s title, performer, and owner. On JYP‘s YouTube upload, those details credited HAN as the performer and JYP as the copyright holder.
JYP is bringing two claims: copyright infringement and a claim under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act over the removal and falsification of the track’s credits.
The complaint does not put a total figure on the damages JYP is seeking.
On the infringement claim, it seeks damages set by law of up to USD $150,000 – the maximum for a single recording where infringement is found to be willful.
On the credits claim, it seeks up to USD $25,000 per violation, without specifying how many violations it is counting.
Alternatively, JYP can choose to pursue its actual losses plus any profits the defendants made from the track.
The lawsuit also asks the court to order the defendants to stop copying or distributing the recording and to stop falsifying its credits, and to make them cover JYP‘s legal fees.
According to the complaint, the ‘yungzzz’ version was uploaded under the same title on or around May 13. That was four days after JYP‘s YouTube release.
On Apple Music, JYP says, the track was offered as a paid download for £0.79, with a listed release date of May 15.
The Apple Music page also carried the notice “℗ 2026 yungzzz.” The ℗ symbol is used to claim copyright in a sound recording.
After discovering the track, JYP says it obtained metadata from YouTube that listed Swiss distributor iGroove as the content owner for the ‘yungzzz’ upload, and Hitmaker Music Group as the label behind it.
On September 2, JYP sent iGroove a written demand to identify who owned the ‘yungzzz’ account, according to the filing.
iGroove responded by pointing to Hitmaker, its distribution partner, which it said had delivered the track and held the direct contract with the account holder.
On September 15, lawyers for Hitmaker named Gaines as the person behind the account, describing him as “the ‘artist’ who uploaded the song,” the complaint states.
Hitmaker‘s lawyers also said Gaines had supplied an Instagram handle matching his name and a Gmail address as the account’s contact details. According to JYP, that address “bears OneSync‘s name.”
Neither iGroove nor Hitmaker is named as a defendant.
The complaint says OneSync‘s website describes Gaines as the company’s founder and CEO, and the company as a distributor serving more than 400 streaming and download platforms.
JYP argues that Gaines and OneSync “had the means, expertise, and opportunity to copy the Sound Recording from the Pre-Release and deliver it to a distributor…”
The complaint alleges, on information and belief, that Gaines did this personally on behalf of OneSync.
It further alleges that the defendants “knew that they (or ‘yungzzz’) did not author, create, perform on, or own the Sound Recording, and knew that they had unlawfully reproduced it from JYPE‘s Pre-Release.”
According to the complaint, the false credits were intended to induce “digital service providers (including Hitmaker), platforms, and members of the public to believe that ‘yungzzz’ was the legitimate performer and rightsholder of the Sound Recording, thereby avoiding detection of the infringement and facilitating the Sound Recording’s continued unauthorized exploitation.”
OneSync announced its full public launch on May 15 – the same date the complaint gives for the ‘yungzzz’ track’s release on Apple Music.
In that announcement, OneSync said that, since its beta phase, it had handled distribution for acts including Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, The Game, and Cash Cobain.
According to the complaint, Stray Kids has sold more than 40 million albums and was the first act to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with its first nine charting albums.
Last month, investment firms The NEXROC Group and SVCV said they were considering a tender offer for up to 50% of the shares in JYP, which is also home to TWICE, as MBW reported.
JYP said at the time that it had not received any proposal. The following day, South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service said it was highly unusual to announce a planned tender offer via press release before filing a registration statement.
In September, Universal Music Group sued DistroKid, alleging that the DIY distributor kept sending recordings to other streaming services after conceding it did not hold the rights to them.
UMG was also among the plaintiffs in a 2024 lawsuit against Believe and its subsidiary TuneCore, which the two sides settled in April 2026.
A day before the DistroKid suit, recorded music body IFPI published the Streaming Integrity Initiative (SII), a set of voluntary anti-fraud standards for distributors.
The first of the SII‘s five principles calls on distributors to verify who owns the rights to the music they deliver and who their customers are.Music Business Worldwide
