The Fifty Fifty case and the end of small companies in Korea

The Fifty Fifty case will be decided at the courts.

There are few cases about this kind of issue, and the win rate of the idols tends to be good.

Korean judges tend to be ignorant of the entertainment world, and they just treat such cases like regular labor cases. It doesn't really matter for Siahn and the FF members to lose this case. If they can get an injunction, which lets them operate outside of Korea, they have won for all practical purposes, and just have to give the Attrakt owner the contract termination fee.

The $6 milion the Attrakt owner supposedly spent for FF is grossly exaggerated, and will not fly in the court, which tends to be decided by who employs the more expensive lawyer and the law firm the FF members are using is no small fish.

if this case ends with the FF members winning for all practical purposes, that means the end of fly-by-night small outfits in KPop.

Singers will be able to move on to greener pastures if they have shown some success, after paying some fees to their existing owner, who can no longer milk them so he could do what he feels like.

If it is left up to the owners, they will never really invest anything on the artists, and will enrich themselves. The owners of GFriend , Chungha, Momoland and Brave Girls all neglected their acts to develop newer acts according to what they felt like and these acts did not go well after that.

This case will probably introduced the american style of Kpop acts - acts will be loyal to their producers, not their companies, and will strictly operate in contractual method.

Major companies will continue to produce idols as we know it, but all the smaller outfits will be gone, because they are too small to retain the talents they assembled .

I think this is a good thing, a huge improvement. Companies which are too small for their idols should not be allowed to retain them, in my opinion.

Quote from selfmate

not much different from any other entertainment contract - kpop or otherwise no?

the artist will always seek a better deal even more so if their original contract was heavily slanted in favour of the company

and also hindsight is 20/20 - does anyone really think all this would've happened had 50/50 remained nugu and not blown up with cupid?

Probably not, but now FF does not need Korea , the Korean contracts and any hangers on associated with Korea.

All of the news coming out here and there are just noise. Courts don't really listen to such noise; they only see the legal papers which won't favor the Attrakt owner. This will end the era of the fly by night owners in Korea, a long overdue relic which existed as early as 1930s.

Quote from 1RL257

For anyone curious, this is their lawyer(the one who submitted their injunction according to public news). and according to others their law firm is really good at lawsuits.

All the news about them is just desperate straw-grabbing by the Attrakt owner, whose chance at the court is not good. He won't be able to provide any documents of all of his claims. He said she said does not fly in the court with the lack of evidences.

He wants to pressure the public opinion to influence the court, but the cold reality is he might win the first round but he will lose the appeal since his case is very weak. All he has is a bunch of claims with no real evidence.

Quote from selfmate

that's an interesting perspective given that FF is not even a year old...

I mean time will still tell if FF was merely a one hit wonder or whether as a result of cupid they move onto bigger and better heights

I really don't know how the courts will judge since I'm not that familiar with the SK court/legal system - except that it will be interesting to see how it plays out...

as to the issue of fly by night owners I mean everyone has to start somewhere right? no one becomes apple or samsung or whatever overnight but usually they are fly by owners who had a product and eventually managed to crawl themselves up from their mother's garage/basements etc etc

I'm sure some of them are dodgy as F but others might genuinely be decent bosses who are just trying to do their best but are constrained by various issues - the real Q is who is whom (without the benefit of hindsight)

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SK court system is like a crapshoot. The judges have minds of their own ; often they are criticized for delivering strange verdicts.

But in this case it is a simple one, either the members can terminate their contracts or not, and how much fee they have to pay to terminate it. Which is why the owner brings on unlikely numbers which won't stand the scrutiny of the court.

At most the members will 'lose', and will be required to pay the owner maybe $50,000 - $150,000, and go their way. So even though they lost they did win since Attrakt can't do anything against them anymore.

The key is who gets Aran. I don't think the attrakt owner will get what he wants.

Quote from selfmate

I'm not that familiar with FF so I won't comment directly on their situation but in terms of the parts I bolded

to my knowledge generally - in case of a losing party they are required to provide compensation to the other for the "loss" - and the loss would include loss of future earnings or loss of earning potential not just a default amount no?

it's like being injured (as a result of a car accident or something) that the victim isn't just compensated for loss of CURRENT earnings but loss of FUTURE potential earnings as well and given the rise of FF that could amount to a lot more but maybe SK contract laws differ...

Actual earnings were lower because there were little activity and the owner actually put himself into an onus by accidentally saying that it was his decision to not promote without Aran. I wonder who is coaching him , since it does not seem to be done by professionals

In Korea, 'future earnings' compensation is actually quite low, usually around minimum wage. Many families were ruined when their breadwinners were killed and the culprit simply refused to pay or at most put maybe $40,000 to $80,000 in escrow, which the court usually grants.

When the rocker Shin Haechul died because of a medical malpractice, the doctor, who has a long history of malpractice but still practicing, was ordered to cough up $1 million for the future earnings of Shin who died at the age of 46. He was a well known leftist talking head who was in a program just filmed before his death, but that was what Korean courts awarded.

Since the members did not really earn much, except maybe the income from the digitals which will go to The Givers which is now a 'third party', the owner can't really collect too much from their future earnings.

A lot of Koreans who don't know how the law works are telling many stories, but the cold reality is that the owner lacks enough evidence to win in the court, and although the members will probably 'lose' in there, they will be able to terminate the contract by paying a token amount, far short of the owner's bloated expectation of $6 million, and move on to some foreign companies who are 'mysteriously' related to some other members of the Givers organization, and never look at Korea ever again.

Quote from oneinamiyeon

I am very curious who he's taking counsel from too. His actions make no business sense. Apparently, he wanted to possibly stop all activities even when SIAHN threatened to quit if he was gonna insist.

Exclusive: "Barbie" OST music video filming was canceled

Link

The meat of the article:

[...ahead of the filming, the members of Fifty Fifty sent Attrakt a proof of contents regarding the termination of the exclusive contract. In response, Attrakt CEO Jeon Hong-Joon suggested that they postpone the schedule saying that they should shoot the music video after the problems between the members and the company were sorted out. Then, according to Attrakt, CEO Ahn Sung-il said that if he couldn't proceed with filming the music video, he would quit the Fifty Fifty job.

Due to these circumstances, Fifty Fifty could not film the music video for 'Barbie Dreams' and could not participate with Margot Robbie in events in Korea featuring 'Barbie' cast members.]

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Jeon is no angel and his behavior now is no different than that of other korean company owners who are little more than thugs on the street. The public, who don't know how this game is played, are saying a bunch of things but if he 'loses', which is likely, he will be torn apart.

What he is doing is hardly rational. It is more like blackmailing.

Quote from alexS

who are you and why did you kidnap WhyKnock?

I tend to be quite objective on subjects not involving IU

Quote from Drew_B

So kpop is about to introduce Free Agency?

Yes, just like the Americans.

That means the end of small outfits and the real power will be moved to the hands of the actual producers