u/Background-Job2662

[WE ARE IN TOUCH WITH KARIKS TEAM AND ARE PUTTING A PAUSE ON THIS THREAD AS PER THERE REQUEST]

PS. THANK YOU SCOTLAND!

TL;DR: My wife and I wrote and released a song in Scotland in 2011. In 2013, a major Vietnamese artist, Karik, released a song using the same lyrics and melody without credit or compensation. We have original recordings, live footage, and public upload evidence, but so far we’re being ignored and are looking for help getting the issue taken seriously.

So I’ll be the first to acknowledge this is a weird story. At this point I think the only thing that will help us is if we can get the internet behind us and gain awareness. I also won’t post links here as I’m not trying to promote anything, but all the information I speak about is easily available on a quick Google search.

I’m hoping everyone here can help me.

Back in 2011 me and my wife, Ashleigh Munn at the time, wrote, recorded, released and performed various songs around Scotland.

One of those songs was called “Need Someone When I’m Alone”. It was released in 2011 on the album “Blind Ambition”.

In late 2013 my wife saw that an artist from Vietnam had plagiarised the song, and refused to acknowledge her, provide credit, or compensation.

The song in question is Karik – “E” ft Windy Quein.

We own the original recordings we made in 2011, we have videos of us performing it live in 2011, and streaming platforms still hold our original song. This is all publicly available, minus the original recordings that we have secured.

At the time my wife was 8 months pregnant and we had our first child in Jan 2014, so life took over, and then shortly after that my wife fell ill, i then became a full time carer for ashleigh and had to leave full time employment around four years ago.

We recently started working on music again and this song came back up, only now we realise that Karik is now a major recording artist signed to Warner Music, hosts his own prime time TV show, is in major movies and has major sponsorship deals. He won rapper of the year in 2025 and released a double album in 2024 to major acclaim. He is not a small independent artist, that's the point I'm tyring to make.

He is still actively selling our song he stole in 2011.

We have tried all the correct ways to handle this. We have contacted lawyers, managers, labels, etc. and so far we are very much getting ignored. To a degree I understand how weird the story is and how international situations like this can be difficult to navigate but still feel we deserve a response to correct this situation and he should not be allowed to get away with plagiarism.

This is why we are turning to Reddit. We are looking for anyone who might be able to help us deal with this situation. A contact in the music industry, on the legal side, if all else fails, we want this story to be told.

If anyone has every dealt with a similar situation or has a suggestion that we haven't thought of please bring your idea forward.

We don’t want to be another story of a major artist stealing from unknown artists and it being ignored.

If you can share this post in any way, we are hoping if we can gain traction online, it puts pressure on Karik’s team to take our claim seriously and do the right thing.

We are not influencer-level social media people, we don’t have a following or any label behind us.

If anyone who reads this has a platform that could help get eyes on this, we would really appreciate the support in getting the story out there.

If anyone see's this who is involved in the legal side, please know we have a full evidence package showing the clear copyright infringement and a timeline of events as well as public archive listings showing the infringement's in his claims.

If anyone is interested in helping please drop me DM or Comment. If anyone wants more information (as I've tried to keep this short) again DM or Comment and I'll get back to you.

With all the fallout of the cuts it got me thinking about something that is now pretty obvious in hindsight.

TKO see WWE as a TV Show only. We know they hired writers from TV industry to help with creative (and I personally think it did in the beginning)

They dropped all the house shows, yeh they still do some but not anywhere near a priority (Randy Orton even said this is why some new guys are struggling in ring, not enough reps)

Then with workload lowered and wellbeing increased, they opted to cut salaries to now match the workload.

It's simple in there mind, actors get paid for episodes they appear in, now most wrestlers appear in a lot less episodes so they shouldn't be paid the same.

Now we all know WWE will always exist because of its size, but as a guy who watches WWE religiously and only keeps one eye over at AEW and other promotions checking out big matches or hyped events, this has really made me reconsider where I invest my time, and I feel that if I'm feeling that way there must be a lot of others, and I think TKO (and WWE by extension) have massively underestimated how much of there fan base will fall a way if they continue this approach.

Don't really have a huge point about this, its just something that now really bugging me, i understand if the wrestlers now do HALF the dates then I get that contract going forward will be valued a lot lower but i think the part they have overlooked is how much these guys can make on there own in the indies doing as many dates as they want.

I suppose if I was to offer a solution rather than just ranting, bring the houseshows back, make sure they are family affordable and maybe just lower the people who appear on them, I'm not saying only b or c list wrestlers but they don't need to be littered with names like a PLE.

Fans get a cheap way to see stars, under utilized stars who cant get screen time get to make mistakes and make connections with young fans organically in the house shows, to get over and push onto tv. It also allows those who NEED more money to put in more work in the house shows... surely this is a simple solution.

feels like WWE only want the wrestlers to work if its part of one of there "tv shows".