Wu Qingfeng has always not understood why the "family" who has accompanied him through the musical road for many years would laugh and terminate his contract with him while stabbing him in the back.
| Author: Wang Zhening
| Editor: Curry
Wu Qingfeng was especially afraid of the first rays of light in the morning recently, and he did not want to wake up, because he did not know what ridiculous things to face in this new day.
This is not his usual attitude towards life.
Wu Qingfeng is the kind of boy who exudes a small sun temperament. Appearing at a friend party, he was funny and ugly, and because the female friends he had hugged were pregnant, they were nicknamed "Brother Sender". At the concert, singing became a side hustle, and his delicate and obedient "talk show" made fans listen to the blood. On the variety show, he is full of witty words, but the "poisonous tongue" never offends. Even at the age of 39, he is still as crazy, unreasonable, and hairy as a child, but he always maintains warmth and purity.
The sunshine in his heart was shrouded in clouds, and it seemed that it began last July when Soda Green changed its name to "Fish Diced" without warning.
Earlier, he held a concert at the Taipei Arena and announced that soda green was reunited, but he did not expect to be prosecuted by the Taipei District Prosecutor's Office the next day.
It was no one else who sued him, it was Lin Weizhe, whom he regarded as a "family member".
On December 31, 2018, Wu Qingfeng and former agent Lin Weizhe issued a joint statement announcing the end of the partnership. They walked out of the elevator arm in arm and said, "You can't cooperate, but you can still be a family." ”
The taste of being stabbed in the back by "family", Wu Qingfeng quickly realized. On March 30 this year, Wu Qingfeng and Lin Weizhe's copyright dispute case was heard.
Wu Qingfeng was interviewed by the media outside the court, his heart was heavy, the corners of his eyes were low, and he mentioned the dispute that lasted for more than two years and choked up several times: "I still can't understand why a teacher who has always believed so blindly has become like this." ”
On March 30, Wu Qingfeng was interviewed by the media and was depressed.
The development of things to this point is something that Wu Qingfeng could not have imagined. He has always been grateful to Lin Weizhe's "Bo Le" feelings, but he was "pitted" by the most trusted people, resulting in a time unable to sing his own songs, and could not continue the band activities under the name of "Soda Green", which made fans feel painful.
On April 1, the second-instance judgment of the case was pronounced, Wu Qingfeng won the lawsuit, and the sentence that appeared most often in the comments of netizens was that "justice will never be absent."
"A loophole" in the contract
The dispute between the two began with the signing of a contract in 2008.
Wu Qingfeng signed three contracts with his then-manager Lin Weizhe, including a songwriting copyright license contract, which means the music lyrics created by Wu Qingfeng, and as of the end of 2014, they were exclusively licensed to Lin Weizhe.
However, there is a detail in the contract that the terminating party needs to notify the other party in writing not to renew the contract within 3 months before the end of the contract (before September 30 of each year). Otherwise, the contract will be automatically renewed.
In 2018, Soda Green announced its suspension. Since then, Wu Qingfeng has announced his re-debut as a solo musician. In October, he sent a letter to Mr. Lin stating that he would not renew his contract. On December 31, he and Lin Weizhe, who had worked together for 15 years, issued a joint statement announcing the official end of the partnership.
At the end of 2018, Wu Qingfeng announced on Weibo that he and his boss Lin Weizhe and his music company had terminated their cooperation.
In a statement posted on Weibo, Wu Qingfeng said that he would handle the follow-up work by himself, while Lin Weizhe showed reluctance, understanding and support, and the attitude of the two sides seemed to be peaceful and consistent.
After the end of the partnership, Wu Qingfeng remade 12 songs such as "Astronaut", "Ode to the Ode", "Celebration of the Tower of Babel", published albums 5 times, and appeared on shows and held public performances several times.
I thought that after the termination of the contract, all the copyrights belonged to me, but what happened next caught Wu Qingfeng by surprise.
Months after seemingly amicably ending the relationship, Mr. Lin played the game of "time difference" without warning, insisting that Wu Qingfeng had not "objected in writing" by the end of September of the previous year, arguing that the copyright contract would remain in force after January 2019.
This means that without knowing it, Wu Qingfeng singing his previous songs on shows and concerts, as well as creating new songs again, is "infringement".
With the time loophole in the contract that year, Lin Weizhe sued Wu Qingfeng and Liao Bizhen, a legal person of Harikun's Carnival Co., Ltd. (Wu Qingfeng's mother in her 70s), in the form of criminal and civil compensation.
In July last year, Wu Qingfeng appeared at the scene of the copyright trial.
Because there was a written agreement between the two before, a joint statement at the end of 2018, agreeing that there was no "song authorization relationship" between them, the court ruled that Lin Weizhe lost the civil lawsuit, and the trial of the criminal part continued until recently.
On March 30, the Taipei District Court held a hearing, and Wu Qingfeng appeared in court to answer the trial. Huang Xiulan, the lawyer who handled the termination at that time, recalled in court that Wu Qingfeng and Lin Weizhe took the elevator arm in arm when talking about the termination of the contract more than two years ago, and when Wu expressed his willingness to continue to cooperate with Lin, Lin said that he would cut it clean, and Wu replied: "Good, can't cooperate, you can also be a family." ”
In this farce of the common dispute between artists and former agents in the entertainment industry, Wu Qingfeng has never been able to let go. He has always not understood why the "family" who has accompanied him through the musical road for many years would laugh and break his contract with him while stabbing him in the back.
An indissoluble relationship with musical text
Wu Qingfeng has always been an articulate and creative singer. The lyrics he writes always bring people fantasy and comfort: in AIR, "the moon can't decide its own light, the great people are confused, and then say just like it, and then let it become forever"; in "Smiling Fish", "I haven't looked up at the moon in the sky for a long time, and I forgot how to make a wish with the stars"; in "The Little Universe", "the old years have turned into butterflies and all fly in my room"...
The mood in the lyrics is closely related to Wu Qingfeng's experience.
Different from the hobbies of his peers, When he was a child, Wu Qingfeng liked classical music, not only buying CDs of classical music to listen to at home, but also going to the library to look for some related books, understand the connotation behind music, and then delve into musical scores and notes, and find typos in books by the way. Therefore, his mother often felt that he was a bit "weird".
Although there was no systematic practice, Wu Qingfeng taught himself as soon as he found the opportunity. My sister was learning piano at home, and he watched from the sidelines, and when he was finished, he asked his sister for the details of the score. His favorite composers are Claude Debussy, Eric Satie, etc., and until now, whenever he has time, he always comes up with the CDs of his idols to listen to.
Not only that, Wu Qingfeng has also been quite sensitive to words since childhood.
When Wu Qingfeng was three or four years old, he trained him to write, and when guests came to the house, he let him perform in public and read newspapers.
When he was in elementary school, Wu Qingfeng studied the typesetting and compilation of several dictionaries, reversed the order of the previous dictionaries, and "created" a private dictionary himself.
After entering high school, Wu Qingfeng became the president of the Colonel's Magazine. At that time, the journal also needed manual typesetting, he edited the article, drew the grid, and then cut the article and pasted it on the page.
When he arrived at the university, Wu Qingfeng was also a "scholar". Xu is because of the sensitivity of words cultivated from childhood, he chose the only Chinese department that is not rejected when he volunteered. Although his grades were average in his freshman year, after his sophomore year, he realized that he had to study hard, and after class, he soaked in the library, read a lot of books, and won the "Book Award" issued by the school.
Even if the itinerary is very tight now, he often reads books while waiting for the plane and putting on makeup, and marks his impressions on the foot of the book at any time.
During the years of the Soda Green Break, Wu Qingfeng's creations were more intuitive. He does not force himself to follow a particular style, to travel endlessly with his imagination without limitation.
Wu Qingfeng's album cover of "Book Leaf One: One and One".
Wu Qingfeng's creative tolerance and richness are very high, and social topics such as Alzheimer's disease and marginalized people have also appeared in previous albums, and even added morse code to the song, allowing fans to guess the meaning.
Therefore, the interaction between fans and Wu Qingfeng seems to have become the norm. Whenever Wu Qingfeng released a new album or a new song, there will always be fans who write their understanding and analysis into letters, send them to him, or publish their thoughts and impressions on the Internet, and these feedbacks sometimes reverse the source of inspiration for Wu Qingfeng's creation.
15 years of friendship, into a delusion?
Many fans describe Wu Qingfeng as cute, transparent, sincere and other words, whether it is treating people or treating music, he has always been very pure, such a personality, but also led to him being "put together" by Lin Weizhe.
At the beginning, Wu Qingfeng and drummer Xiao Wei and bassist Xinyi were classmates of the National Taiwan Normal University Affiliated High School, and after the formation of Soda Green in high school, everyone was invariably admitted to Taiwan Chengchi University, and the band continued. There were several changes in the middle, and finally stabilized into the current soda green lineup.
Member of Soda Green, second from the right is Wu Qingfeng.
The reason why it was named soda green is because Wu Qingfeng likes green, and soda sounds fresh and bubble-like, which also coincides with the style of the future combination.
At the 2001 Ocean Season Music Festival, Soda Green, who won the Grand Jury Prize, was favored by Lin Weizhe, who was a music producer at the time, because of his unique musical style.
In fact, it was Soda Green's last tour before it was ready to disband. Originally, several people still had a year to graduate from college, the future path was different, and they planned to part ways, but they were found by Lin Weizhe, who passed by by accident, handed over their business cards, and signed a contract soon after, and only then did Soda Green go all the way to popularity.
In a sense, Lin Weizhe is the one who really spreads their musical bubbles, and it is also the Bole of Soda Green, and Wu Qingfeng is naturally grateful to him.
Wu Qingfeng and Lin Weizhe took a group photo
Lin Weizhe first worked at the Rolling Stones' Magic Rock Records, with record producers as the main business, and was also responsible for songwriting and discovering new talents. After winning the Golden Melody Award for Best Album Producer, he became independent and established the Lin Weizhe Music Club, which also cooperated with singers such as Chen Qizhen and Karen Mok.
After signing Soda Green, Lin Weizhe has been helping Soda Green produce albums, from album design, printing, styling, all the way to the final recording. When the funds were insufficient, he even did not hesitate to sell his house and car to raise funds.
However, in the face of interests, people who were once full of musical ideals also bowed their heads.
On April 3, 2013, without the knowledge of the members of Soda Green, Lin Weizhe privately registered the trademark of Soda Green. In 2018, without notifying Wu Qingfeng, he signed the copyright to other companies for 35 songs for the next three years, and the signing time had exceeded the termination date of the contract between the two.
Wu Qingfeng remembered his old feelings and did not want his mentor to bear the liquidated damages, so he continued to accept the contract.
However, Lin Weizhe had to make progress. Since the two worked together, nearly 300 songs have been privately released or signed by Lin Weizhe, and the resulting profit dividend is estimated to exceed 100 million yuan, but Wu Qingfeng has never asked for the return of profits.
Until the final termination of the contract, Wu Qingfeng still had feelings of gratitude for this "Bole" who had the grace of knowing and meeting.
After Lin Weizhe appealed, Soda Green had to change his name to Fish Ding Yu for the performance, and Wu Qingfeng also suffered from both psychological and external pressure.
After the trial of Wu Qingfeng's copyright case, he posted a picture with the text "Don't worry.".
On March 28, Wu Qingfeng posted on Weibo, still full of gentleness and goodwill: "Do not seek evil and have evil retribution, but seek good and repay good... I hope that one day I will wake up happily and wake up to see the light. ”
Zhang Shaohan, a friend who has been entangled in a similar lawsuit for 13 years, supported him under Wu Qingfeng's Weibo: "Anyone should stand up for their rights and interests!" I believe that justice may be late but never absent! ”
Zhang Shaohan left a message to comfort Wu Qingfeng.
On April 1, after winning the case, Wu Qingfeng sighed on Weibo: "Still can't understand, 15 years, finally exchanged for an illusion..."
I only hope that Wu Qingfeng can let go of the past, the wound scabs and regenerate flowers, and re-meet his own light and beauty.