A lot of industry insiders do not really give a crap about FF's success, since there is a very high chance that it will be a one hit wonder with little lasting effects.
There are plenty of one-hit phenoms which simply faded away. FF's few fans claim their owner is a genius, a supreme planner, etc but given that he doesn't seem to know what to do after this success largely disproves this theory.
Kpop system was found by Lee Sooman in 1990s, and is proven and successful. Larger outfits who will have enough money to promote their acts around Asia will have no reason to follow FF's model and won't.
I cited the examples of Lorde and Billie Eilish. The latter does have a solid producer, her brother Finneas, so she will retain some of her popularity but won't reach her height again. Hardly anyone remembers Lorde now. The jury is out on Olivia Rodrigo but her next album will show her destiny.
it is important that other than Jang Wonyoung, who is kind of an outsider in the KPop world herself because of her alleged Chinese ancestry which has never been proven or disproven, no one in KPop is so eager to cover FF and no one is willing to strike a friendship with them. Having watched how GFriend was shunned by fellow acts after its popularity began to wane (it has very few friends remaining now), I can understand why Kpop acts are shy trying to deal with FF since they have no assurance that FF would be around after the next promotion, which would be intensely attacked by IU and others.
At the worst of worst, the KPop industry might just choose to shun FF altogether, considering it to be a Pop act, no different from Ann Marie and other foreign acts which became popular in Korea. In other words, Korean industry will simply not count FF's numbers, not award them anything other than some special award like what was given to Brave Girls.
In my opinion, Aran's surgery last week, for whatever reason, was the decisive moment for FF. The owner having the graciousness, or maybe stupidity, to allow Aran what she wanted to do showed he was not serious about FF's success, a fact which would not be lost on its many enemies.
In the end the FF craze will probably go down like the Gangnam Style craze. Psy is back doing events in bullshit K-O-R-E-A-N colleges. The lack of foreign experience of the owner and his hope to be recognized in K-O-R-E-A will prove to be its undoing. If he does sell his tiny company to Warner Music FF could be saved, but if not, hardly anyone will know who they were by 12 months from now.
Basically, the whole ethos of KPop is selling not only the songs, but the members and the group. For FF, the hit song is famous but very few people care about the members. Which means when another viral song comes out from some other place, it will be easily swept away.
