On May 24th, NewJeans’s agency ADOR released the new song “How Sweet” on all music sites at 1 p.m. KST and the music video of the song at 4 p.m. later on the same day. Within 4 days of its release, the music video exceeded 8.6 million views, proving the popularity of NewJeans. However, an age restriction was suddenly applied to the video.
In this regard, HYBE said, “HYBE does not set any age limit when uploading music videos to YouTube. YouTube classifies the video as age-restricted content according to their own standards. We already requested YouTube to check the exact criteria that led to the age restriction on this video”.
Despite HYBE’s explanation, netizens continued raising theories in online communities and in the comment section of “How Sweet” music video. In fact, theories appeared because the dispute between HYBE and ADOR’s CEO Min Hee-jin is still going on.
Expressing their opinions under “How Sweet” MV, netizens commented, “I asked YouTube and they said HYBE directly applied the restriction by themselves”, “Isn’t HYBE doing this only to NewJeans?”, “Why are they doing this to NewJeans?”, “I heard they even turned off notification for new video”, “Seems like they’re deleting comments again, like the ‘OMG’ music video”, “Isn’t it restricted because the music video indirectly criticizes HYBE?”.
On May 29th, the age restriction for “How Sweet” music video was already lifted. However, the comment section is still full of comments about theories related to HYBE and ADOR’s conflicts instead of reviews about the music video.
As the controversy over unfair treatment for NewJeans intensifies, a netizen posted in an online community, saying “NewJeans’s latest album is expected to sell at least 1 million copies, not just 810,000. However, albums purchased from the Weverse Shop have not been shipped even a few days after the album release. It’s so ridiculous that HYBE, which always tries to encourage increasing album sales, is not shipping NewJeans albums. These series of their actions are just so dirty and malicious.”
However, many netizens refuted this statement, saying it is a common problem for HYBE artists. Others commented, “Not only NewJeans but other HYBE artists have suffered the same thing”, “I bought BTS’s RM album but have not received it yet”, “The same thing happens to all HYBE artists”, “Other artists have experienced this problem since 2022”, “HYBE has never worked properly. NewJeans is not the only group with that problem”, “HYBE should improve their work”, etc.
