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it seems like there's still a pretty big misunderstanding among fans and journalists re: this whole "SM paid a songwriter $60 for a song" drama, so i'm going to take a moment and try to explain a little more clearly this time. grab a drink and pull up a chair if you'd like 
so, first of all, no, of course it isn't possible for a writer to make just $66 (paid two years later!) for a major label k-pop song. the TL;DR is she's def received thousands of dollars for her work on "go"/"boss" so far, so if that's all you need to know you're free to go 
as for the $66, what she's referring to was a sync license agreement. a song is 'synced' when it's used for a secondary commercial purpose, like in a film or advertisement. the sync in question, of the nct dream song "go"...
...was for a mere total of $500, which means it was probably a brief usage for a minor purpose (definitely not film, TV, etc, as low as those sync rates often are in korea). this songwriter said she has a 13% stake in that song, meaning her cut of the $500 would be around $66
now, a lot of fans and journalists still seem to think that this songwriter only has 13% of "go" because of a 'bad deal' she signed â as in, SM or EKKO screwed her out of the rest. this is not the case
the other 87% of the song belongs to...the other songwriters who wrote the song with her. according to Melon, there were at least 4 other writers on the song. so the rest of this one-time $500 sync would be split amongst them and their publishers
but of course, it's not like songwriters only get paid in sync licenses â these are secondary, long-after-the-fact revenue streams. by this point, all of the writers have naturally received much larger payments long ago
what kind of payments? it depends. "trackers," i.e. the people who make the track (/the beat), get an upfront "track fee" from the label. in both korea and america, only trackers get that fee â topliners (who come up with the vocal parts) do not
judging by what the songwriter tiffany posted on her instagram, it seems like she's a topliner. her 13% stake of "go" is about what you would expect from a topliner's share of a song, so that would check out
on the other hand, some have reported that she owns 30% of "boss," which is a lot for any one topliner to have, especially in an SMP song with so many discrete sections and writers. if she really does have 30% it's possible she contributed to the beat, in which case...
...she would've received some of that track fee. in any case, a track fee is the only standard upfront payment a composer receives from a label, be it SM or Universal Music Group or whoever
the rest of the payment is in royalties, which is handled by the writer's publisher. in this writer's case, that's EKKO. EKKO collects those revenues on behalf of their writers and passes them along accordingly
(there is some dispute online about how involved SM is with EKKO. they're obviously closely aligned, but let's just say SM has literally dozens of subsidiary companies and investments, and EKKO isn't one of them. also, EKKO publishes songs for lots of other major labels in korea)
now, although the songwriter tiffany has made thousands of dollars off of these two songs, she's repeatedly asserted that she must be owed more. this notion seems to be related to her insistence that "go" and "boss" were gigantic hits in korea â like, "growl" or "red flavor" big
i'm not sure on what she's basing that (except youtube views, as she explains, which make a pittance â and those views aren't all that high...), but "go" and "boss" weren't even remotely hits in korea. they're great songs (cough "boss" especially cough) but not popular at all
they didn't chart in korea. i live in seoul, and i've never once heard these songs on TV, on the cab radio, in the convenience store, on the street, anywhere. and i've heard Rainbow album cuts in public. Rainbow.
it's a shame, because "go" can make american boy scouts feel like moshing and "boss" is without a doubt top 100 korean songs of all time for me. they deserved more â but SM was too future and despite investing heavily in promo those songs were simply years ahead of the public
so then, where would those thousands of dollars tiffany made come from? album sales. NCT 2018 empathy sold a few hundred thousand copies, iirc, so that's def where those songwriter royalties add up
that said, a big surge in k-pop album sales is usually a one-and-done revenue stream, and there's a lot of songs on that album, so it makes sense if they each generated less revenue than some laypeople might expect. but in any case, that's def where the topliners made their $$$
as for the wildfire rumor that Black creatives are paid less than other writers in k-pop, that's broadly untrue from what i know and especially with regard to SM and EKKO. in fact, they typically invest more in getting international writers opps because of the logistics involved
in any case, it seems some other writers have spoken up about their positive experience, which is reassuring to see (i also have some writer friends who've done so on other platforms only to find their comments were deleted, but that's another story) https://twitter.com/iamshaejacobs/status/1273892616187244546?s=21 https://twitter.com/iamshaejacobs/status/1273892616187244546
as for this new claim that k-pop must necessarily be derivative devil music because publishers and labels send leads to songwriters citing non-korean music as references, this is something every pop label in the world does...and some western companies are even citing k-pop now 
in any case, i think anyone can understand why tiffany felt aggrieved when this dispute started and i don't mean to contest any of the broader context there in any way. but intentionally or not there's loads of misinfo floating around and i figured i'd do what i could to clarify
as for my attempt to do so a few weeks ago, it was 5am and i was exasperated, which led to its own set of inaccuracies and wack vibes. i hope my thoughts were a bit clearer and more helpful this time 
