For weeks, the young girl group Fifty Fifty made headlines with their hit Cupid, which catapulted them to the top of the charts and broke all kinds of records. But for about two weeks now, a different topic has been front and center: All four members of Fifty Fifty have applied to suspend their exclusive contracts with their label ATTRAKT.
The legal dispute between Fifty Fifty and ATTRAKT is affecting the girl group's activities. Yesterday evening, ATTRAKT announced that the music video shoot for the Barbie soundtrack “Barbie Dreams” has been cancelled.
The statement reads as follows:
“It is true that we were unable to shoot the OST music video for ‘Barbie’ at that time. Member Aran was ill and had to undergo surgery. It took several months for her to recover, so we couldn't set a schedule. Then the current situation arose and it became difficult to shoot the music video.” (Translated from Korean.)
In addition, Fifty Fifty's appearance at the K-Pop festival KCON LA 2023 on August 19 was cancelled. The girl group was supposed to perform there alongside other stars such as ATEEZ, Kep1er and ZEROBASEONE.
And these are certainly not the only plans Fifty Fifty had to cancel. It is still unclear how the situation will end and whether the group will be able to pick up where their previous success left off. We're keeping our fingers crossed that a solution will be found soon.
Did you miss the drama? We've summed up the events of the past few weeks for you:
June 23
It began on June 23 with a statement from ATTRAKT. In it, the label first addressed Fifty Fifty's lack of promotions. Fans had previously been wondering why the girl group is barely active despite their success. ATTRAKT explained that one member (Aran) had to undergo surgery and that the whole group therefore took a break to focus on their health.
In the same statement, ATTRAKT also claimed that outside parties had approached their artists (Fifty Fifty) and want to lure them into breaking their exclusive contracts with ATTRAKT in order to sign new contracts with them.
June 26
Three days later, the label announced that the outside parties are the record label Warner Music Korea, which works with ATTRAKT on Fifty Fifty's overseas activities.
Warner Music Korea responded on the same day and claimed that the accusations are baseless. The label said it was disappointed by ATTRAKT's actions and asked people not to spread unconfirmed rumors.
June 28
On June 28, the Fifty Fifty members spoke out themselves: Saena, Keena, Aran & Sino. Through the law firm BARUN, they announced that on June 19 they had applied to suspend their exclusive contracts with ATTRAKT.
According to BARUN, the reason is that ATTRAKT violated the terms of the contract and destroyed trust with its actions. The label allegedly published information about Aran's surgery without consulting them, carried out non-transparent transactions, and tried to push through activities even though the members had communicated their poor state of health.
BARUN stressed that the members made the decision independently, without outside influence.
July 3
After a few days of silence, ATTRAKT recently released an audio recording. The recording is a conversation between ATTRAKT's CEO Jun Hong Joon and Warner Music Korea's Executive Director Yoon.
In the conversation, Yoon brings up a “buyout”. This means that Yoon wants to recruit Fifty Fifty even though their contracts have not yet expired. In a “buyout”, money is usually paid to end the contracts early. ATTRAKT's CEO replies, however, that he knows nothing about a buyout and does not agree.
Now you're up to date! But given how quickly the statements were released in between, new information could come to light as early as tomorrow. What do you think of the situation?
Sources: soompi, naver, heraldcorp, ATTRAKT, hankookilbo, nate
