Posts by onwards

Quote from Hiakuryu

With regards to using their likenesses without their permission, well that is the crux of the issue isn't it. Where Ador says that they are still under contract with them, so you do raise a good point in that Newjeans having not taken any form of legal action in an attempt to stop Ador from using their likenesses could, and imo would likely be problematic to the judge. "In all this time you didn't try to stop them from using your faces on their materials/youtube channel/socials etc?" and so on...

edit: Ex nunc is Latin meaning "from now on".

I feel like they may have some leeway with this one. Them being able to even record this kind of behind the scenes content for a schedule with brands must have been agreed around the same time as the contract was signed, otherwise I can't see so many brands allowing it. If it was pre-agreed it could be taken as them finishing the signed deals as they did before. I do remember some scheduled content with a brand that was meant to be released through Ador getting cancelled but the members still working with the brand afterwards. I

Quote from Hiakuryu

Dude Kim and Chang are huge but it looks like they shoved the B team onto Ador OR imo way more likely Ador and K&C were so supremely arrogant in their position they keep on getting caught out.

You can imagine it can't you? "oh you don't have to worry about them! they're just little girtls."

Not taking them seriously is going to bite them in the ass.

Honestly doesn't matter if they shoved team A onto this. No matter how good the people you hire are, or how much you pay them, it all comes down to how willing the management team is to listen to their advice and I doubt Hybe is willing to listen.

I bet Hybe and Bang thought it wasn't necessary or that filing it closer to their comeback date would be some kind of power play. They likely thought NJZ would be forced back by Hanni's visa or through no work after Hybe tried to stop them working with their connections and didn't want to waste legal fee money having their legal team actually do their job. Deffo going to bite them on the ass.

Quote from Tatiana1820

many stars are extremely famous, beyonce for example, but the critics never use the pretext of being to famous to be unable to shine creativly .

like DUH.

I mean, no. Not even a little bit. Did you not see the volume of people who keep claiming her dropping Cowboy Carter is because Morgan Wallen made country popular and mainstream in the US despite her having all three albums done during the pandemic? Or the amount of times she's been snubbed at the grammys despite literally having dropped genre shifting and hugely impactful albums like Renaissance, Lemonade and Beyonce and there literally being grammy judges who have gone on record saying they didn't vote for her because she is 'too famous and popular'. Lets be real, there is a limit when it comes to popularity and they always want people to stay in their lane.

But I also think another point about the 'too big to fail commercially, but also too big to succeed creatively.' thing is really fair and accurate in her situation. I read it as them saying many artists were able to develop creatively due to commercial failure or the lack of continuous success which allowed them to experiment and find themselves without the pressure to follow up the last success with a carbon copy.

Because she had success with her solo under YG her team just copied that knowing it would sell well and since her solo fanbase in BP also followed her for that sound, will they be receptive to her challenging herself beyond what they have come to expect from her? Thats unlikely. Success is intoxicating. When you are able to bring in a x amount of money in one genre with a specific sound and aesthetic, nobody wants you to change or allow you to develop beyond that (remember how hard IU had to fight to write her own stuff?) and there are plenty of examples, especially with western companies of management stifling further creative development because they've been successful with one sound.

Few can take the media and fan backlash and come out a strong success on the otherside. Fall out boy had an entire song MV about this (the takeover the breaks over). Remember how controversial it was when Taylor Swift went full pop and dropped the country? Many never leave their initial sound for this very reason and some only leave it when their success begins to decline but even that is a risk because they could end up abandoned by the fanbase they have left. When Beyonce first separated from her fathers control and decided to make her own company to make her own music, it was taken as a huge risk to her and many thought she'd fail. Not to mention the huge backlash when she dropped formation. Theres a reason SNL had a sketch called 'the day beyonce turned black'. When renaissance first dropped, huge swaths of her fanbase didn't like it and neither did the public but it was a critical smash as she fully reinvented herself, challenged herself creatively and changed genres. She was able to do it because she owns her own stuff and isn't signed to a label that can control what she can and can't release. Whilst Lisa is under her own company, we don't know the details of the RCA deal and how much input they have in what she releases.

Quote from StanGIDLE

Agreed, it's confusing. What I find weird they have Tate McRae on her label RCA and they aren't using her as a source of reference. Not saying for her to copy Tate but it's the path she needed to go. She's not a vocalist like Olivia Rodrigo and doesn't have the personality in her music like Sabrina, and that's okay. It's just confusing that they're not focusing on performance aspect of Lisa because that is how she won people over. Right now a big part of Tate's success is her performance and having good songs that allow her to do her thing.

I can't think of a song she released so far that would allow her to perform. There were chances in Rockstar to show choreography that she's known for her but they shied away from it. If I was in charge I would look at Tate, Ciara, Tinashe,, Janet,Britney, etc. A lot of the past and current popstars didn't shy away from incorporating dance into their artistry and received praised for it. Lisa needs to do that for her comeback because this is all salvageable but needs to go back to the drawing board and cool it on gigs like the Oscar performance

I kind of wonder about that. I feel like if they were under different agencies, they would have gone for the direct confrontation and tried to use means to lower Tates coverage to show off Lisa, but since she is with them, they had to go a different route. Tate is a rising name so she needs to build her image and support whilst Lisa already has her own fandom, following and industry support (which means they won't make as much money from her with the contract split) so they don't really need to build her up.

Its an interesting choice when its not like multiple artists with the same kind of selling points haven't promoted at the same time. I wonder how worried they were about the optics of favouritism and industry push if they were both in the same lane.

But lets also not forget, the moment they all left YG they were drowning in offers and opportunities, but never learnt how to be selective about them under YG. I wonder if she is doing this purposely because she wanted to show she had more going for her than dance? Maybe it has something to do with something YG said. Its not like he is known for being nice to his female idols.

I'd also point out, many have said for years that the kpop dance push and how thin they want their idols to be is incompatible with long careers. They simply don't have the physical strength to pull off some dance moves without injury or causing long term health issues (side note RIP to all idol joints especially knees). They really have three choices, keep doing the idol dances and she'll have to retire early, gain weight so she can keep dancing for a long time, or stay the same but severely limit dancing and go a different direction for her solo. Since they've gone for choice three, maybe they think some of her fans would not react well if she gained weight (and considering how kpop fans can be, maybe they have a point).

Honestly, it could be for a million reasons, either way it will be interesting to see if anything changes going forward.

Quote from StanGIDLE

The major issue Lisa will have with connecting with US audience is her concept. Her current style of being mainly a rapper rapping about money and how rich and bad she is. Is just not going to go over that well in the US market. She needs to make more relatable music and speak more about her experiences because there wasn't much connections to be had with her album. Lisa is a kind and interesting person and there's plenty of things she can sing about. I am not saying for her to make ballads but she can sing about her life experiences, love life, adapting to new environment, and a lot of other stuff that isn't about how rich and bad she is. Based on her songs so far all we know is she's rich and care about material things and I feel she's much deeper than that as a person. I think this is why there seems to be a lost connection with Lisa and people outside her fanbase

You really hit the nail on the head. I think her album lacking personality, especially her personality really made the issue worse. Western artists survive more on their personality and selling that their music is personal to them far more than idols do. The music just emphasised the issue which is why you've got articles with headlines like this from the guardian 'Lisa: Alter Ego review – a focus group-tested attempt at megastar success'.

Its wild to see them fumble her so badly despite all the resources and people with industry knowhow to hand. Her team don't know how to select resources to build her foundations or her image so are grabbing everything and not thinking of how it will impact or suit her. It's not even like they don't have references to draw from, theres Paula Abdul, JLo and to some extent even Britney, Janet and Boa. If they did it well enough, even the lyrics wouldn't be too big of an issue. I think they focused so much on making sure she could sing live as is expected of western acts, but forgot that we make exceptions when it comes to dance focused acts.

I'd say Aespa under LSM would count. But since they've basically ignored all the black mamba stuff now Orange Caramel got them beat.

Sidenote but is anyone else happy that Lizzy ended her hiatus and joined a new company? We are now one step closer to an Orange Caramel reunion/comeback

Especially with shanghai romance going viral I used to pray for times like these

They've been getting paid since two months after their debut. They all have their own money and they've been doing random performances here and there on top of the CF's, including some they've gotten after leaving Hybe.

Quote from Hiakuryu

Look in all this time why hasn't a Korean financial journalist said to Hybe "What in the seven fucking hells nonsense are you spouting?" Where's the tough questions?

Sorry but even MHJ said the accusations were nonsense so why is the Korean press taking them as a given? FINANCE DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY! I'm sorry but people saying this was MHJ's plan and it was nonsense because she's crazy. What? She denied it. So why did Hybe run with these stupid fucking accusations anyway?

NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE AND IT'S DRIVING ME INSANE!

Hybe has famously been taking journalists to the golf course, treating them to meals and basically buying them off for articles. Its not that financial journalists don't see it, its getting it published. Interestingly, even the financial times articles about the situation didn't mention how dumb the claim was, but the tone kinda implied they also thought it was dumb. Since day 1 Hybe has been running a smear campaign using the media, from releasing cut together texts from her dragging newjeans and hybe idols, to blaming her for the disbandment of a famous girl group, to saying she cursed BTS and relies on a shaman to make her decisions.

They've been doing as they always do, creating news to whip fans into a frenzy hoping the fans on mass would drown out logic and force her out and make her feel too intimidated to launch any case against them. Fact is, they didn't expect her to make Ador as successful as she did so they needed her out so they wouldn't have to pay her according to the set agreement. They've actually done something similar to another female employee (can't find the link right now). She was a driving force behind BTS but they forced her out just before they decided to go public and give shares to employees.

Quote from ThePhantomThief

Maybe you can help, one thread I don't quite follow is the Covid-19/Covid test thing?

After the members surgery, the givers (ASI above) was trying to delay letting them go promote. We now know he was talking with warner but he was also trying to put things in place to steal 5050. According to dispatch and Keena, that picture was not really Saena's positive covid test. Not saying she's never had covid, but when she sent the positive test to attrackt, she didn't actually have it. ASI sent her the picture of the positive covid test telling her to send it to attrackt to push back promotions again. Dispatch got ahold of the picture, searched the metadata and confirmed it was taken at ASI's apartment, not the 5050 dorm.

In Keena's interview (and she showed texts from him backing this up) ASI told them to exaggerate how ill they were to buy him time, so its hard to say how ill they really were but that one was bogus.

Edit - forgot to add, the meta data also showed the date, and it didn't match the date she was claiming. Instead it matched the date when ASI had covid.

Quote from Tatiana1820

aaaand? so what? what's the deal ?

isn't he the one who made cupid? good for them then .

honestly i didn't really follow the whole drama and don't really care ... (i mean if the girls were mistreated then i support them obviously)

Just to add, he didn't make cupid, a bunch of students did. Him and his company didn't even find the song or pay for it, attrakt did. He reregistered the song rights to himself which also meant he stole some song writing credits from Keena for the lyrics she contributed.

After it started to go downhill he abandoned the three and they released a statement basically cutting ties with him and because of him they are being sued for millions..... only for fans to notice the way they were being promoted was very similar to pre 2.0 5050 (Saena and Keena abandoned and only Sio and Arana getting lines and promotion), realise he was involved, demand answers from the company, and them say the members asked for him. Can't make mess like this up

I'm thinking its probably a shipping problem, something to do with the leak or time difference. Maybe they aren't awake to start shipping as yet.

Only one I can find is for China

On checking Hanteo's website, her album versions are there, and the ones in the top 100 add up to 29,131 so someone has started counting/shipping/selling but if others haven't updated Hanteo as yet, theres nothing to do but wait. https://www.hanteochart.com/chart/album/real

Quote from Yama-Chan

Good, the entitled millionaire divas should produce more music so all proceedings can go to ADOR, since they are still officially under ADOR . This is the least they can do after hurting low wage employees at ADOR and Hybe.

Oh am I seated and ready for more reddit crashouts like these

Inject the rage and copium straight into my veins

What I can't wait for is the contract renewals when Hybe groups don't stay with them. Considering how hard they've been working groups like EN- and TXT I doubt they'd stay. And BTS... who knows what they will do but any of those crash outs will be for the history books.

Quote from haricot

Most likely outcome is that the court will quickly reject Ador claim that the contract is still valid and confirm that NJZ can pursue their activities A full trial will then begin and in a few years we will know if NJZ must pay some money to Ador or not. If they must pay money, that amount will probably be way lower than haters are anticipating.

Just my prediction

Don't forget, for the court to say the contract isn't valid, they'll have to give a ruling stating that Ador/Hybe breached it first. Which means they'd have to pay newjeans for breaching the contract and newjeans could even pursue them for trying to interfere with their work.

I can't imagine the meltdown after that result comes out. Especially considering Hybe hasn't exactly been doing well financially and them still needing to pay MHJ according to her share agreement when she wins her suit against them.

Imagine if Hybe end up bankrupt because Bang's ego couldn't take MHJ being better than him at making a group.

Quote from Hiakuryu

I'm sorry to disagree here but the issue is as I posted before on page 44 that the artists used not their contractual rights but their legal rights. As in this is a right that they have not one that is given to them by the contract.

If for example you and I were in a contract together ok?

I as the CEO of Hiakuryu industries promises to sell you widgets at X price a month or whatever right? You as DaisyCorp CEO promise to perform PR duties for me in return ok? Let's say you do absolutely nothing or I provide zero widgets right? This is a breach of the contract, under the civil code of korea because one of us broke the terms of the contract we can basically say "Well it's been broken solidly for X time because the other side didn't hold up their end of the bargain for months. It's OVER!"

They're scrambling because before rookies/idols were always too scared of the agency to go that far as they could be buried because of prior trainee debt and the industry power that the agency has. This doesn't seem to be the case with NJ for whatever reason. They (the band that is) are NOT frightened to exercise their legal rights this time. This has the opportunity to put the entire industry on the back foot.

This is nonsense.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1464240/ador-net-profit/

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Even with the initial seed investment of approx $15m USD and the "trainee debt" for the members it was effectively wiped out with all the profits going from Ador to Hybe in the first year alone.

In 2023 Ador listed a net profit of approximately ₩26.6 bn KRW or $19m USD vs Belift Labs for example which in 2023 had a profit of ₩5.2bn KRW or $3.7m USD

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Source for this data https://theqoo.net/hot/3212546209

It's been obvious to see that any initial debt from the formation of Ador to the trainee debt itself has been completely paid off since then. Please stop stating otherwise when it is completely obvious if you know where to look for the information that this is abundantly not the case.

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Just to add, MHJ was really smart with the money given for debut, she didn't put money into things she didn't think were worth it, instead she put it into creative content. The content, unique debut style and music did alot of the marketing heavy lifting that other companies do with paid articles and interviews.

So much so that Newjeans paid off their trainee debt and debut costs 2 months after debut then started bagging huge endorsements left and right further adding to their income. Anyone saying they owe Ador clearly don't know what they are on about.

Expected him to smash every chart but didn't expect his physical sales to also be insane but GD is GD afterall and no matter what, SK worships GD.

Quote from Yama-Chan

That's what I thought. I also doubt they'll compete with H2H in album sales, but never say never.

A lot of people didn't think they'd have an early edge in charting, but here we are.

If KK is already on the MelOn Hot 100 with their pre-debut song, that's a pretty positive indicator for how their debut song will do.

I think we all really underestimated how much interest them being SS's first group since IVE would bring, especially debuting them so soon after IVE's CB. I think its more akin to JYP dropping Itzy after Twice (minus the big 3 priv) than Cube debuting CLC after 4 minute which is what people were expecting. Yeah people mostly remember them for the mess for WJSN but they also made sistar.

I also think kicking LSM impacted SM more than we thought. Not to be rude, the H2H girls are all pretty but I don't see anyone with the distinct SM look like I'm used to or the classic centre that makes knetz go gaga (Karina, Irene, Krystal). I don't know if its the hair or the outfits, but they all look so similar to each other it feels like any company could have debuted them. IDK how to explain it. When Aespa's debuted, a disturbing amount of the hype was about the visual member or who got trained by yoo youngjin so was destined to be an amazing singer and that carried them despite people disliking their debut song, outfits etc. From what I heard at the time, thats the normal for an SM GG debut. This time, I haven't really seen people going crazy over one specific member apart from Indonesian fans to Carmen because she is Indonesian. I kind of wonder if the change is going to impact the groups overall success.

Quote from Yama-Chan

Okay, let's tally it up.

I think it's safe to already call the battle for album sales. H2H are on a pace to set a new record for 1st Day Sales. Did KK release physical albums?

But the charts show KK has taken an early lead, so it will be interesting to see how each song climbs this week. Early returns favor KK, contrary to the majority opinion here.

Now it's getting fun!

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I swear KK's official debut isn't till late March so no physical as yet, and I do me and debut aren't the actual debut song, more like a pre-release. So can we fully compare the two?

I doubt KK was ever going to outsell H2H on debut, big three privilege and all that (considering JYP was able to sell Nmixx albums at least a year before we knew anything about the group). Only reason IVE sold as well as they did was Izone but charting will be the real battle ground.

Quote from selfmate

I agree that it is not 100% analogous but even in my case even if the formulae was not secret but public and the employee was claiming that they developed the formulae in their own time without the company's assistance or using the company's resources then the original company would (should???) still make a statement on it no?

I agree with you my friend that maybe they should have tried to go for a different approach and your approach does seem better but we aren't privy to the phone call or whatever other means of communication he had with the complexcon people.

Maybe he did go for that approach but we don't know about it - maybe he did write a letter or soemthing else completely (or maybe he didn't)

I've seen those and it will be interesting to see both sides argue that in court

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Honestly I think it was pretty analogous. In your case, it wouldn't be that the formulae wasn't secret but that the employee advertised publicly that they had the secret formulae and were willing to sell it to the highest bidder. Lets say the employee stole the secret recipe for tootsie rolls (a famous american candy). The employee would advertise it publicly and it would be big news inside and outside the industry. In that case, making it known to other companies would make sense, but if the news was viral, the majority of the industry and the public would already know the employee was selling it and who actually owned it. Yeah if the employee is claiming they made it on their own it stands to reason they should make a statement explaining the true situation, but if its already well known, there is little benefit to making a secret phone call, especially since it won't allow the tootsie roll manufacturer to prove they had informed the buyer they owned the recipe.

But as you mentioned, we aren't privy to that phonecall so who knows what was discussed, its all he said she said so its going to be very interesting to see the court case and conclusion of this mess.

Quote from selfmate

interesting

I took it initially in a different direction from your perspective my friend

I think that hybe/ador/bsh (I'm just going to lump them together lol) has a duty to protect it's own interests and that would mean preventing artists that it considers still under contract NJZ from activities that it did not authorise.

I'm not sure how the law works but I would think the first step is to always try to try to prevent the "wrong" in the first place. Like if I was a drug company and had a secret drug formulae and one of my employees stole it and was shopping it around - the first point of call would be to try to prevent the wrong from happening ie. contacting the employee/contacting the other party to say hey this employee's secret formulae belongs to us and thus you shouldn't use it otherwise we might sue you or seek an injunction or something.

Whether hybe is doing any of those things behind the scenes I have no idea and that's why I said it was logical what BSH did what he did - that the first step is to prevent the wrong from happening...since he believes NJZ is still under contract and thus cannot (should not???) perform without ADOR's authorisation and obviously NJZ ain't listening to him so he contacts the third party (complexcon) to see if they are willing to

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I see where your coming from but the situation you mentioned is based on the employee secretly taking the drug formulae and trying to sell it. In that case, the first step is prevention. But Hybe has already done the prevention and its not like the dispute isn't public. They've launched legal cases, requested the media use the old name, are forwarding any photoshoots they do as NJZ with the newjeans instagram with the new name removed etc.

There is no way complexcon didn't know about the dispute (else they wouldn't have booked them) yet still advertised it is NJZ. Calling complexcon directly isn't going to help the situation and instead gives leeway for it to be taken as them trying to strongarm complexcon into cancelling the appearance. A better look would have been sending an official letter or making a post saying, they didn't agree to this performance, complexcon didn't go through them despite them being the legal reps for their industry work and they are taking this as a breach of the contract but as they are still the legal reps and are still open to seeking opportunities for newjeans, they are waiting for complexcon to contact them to discuss a possible appearance.

But fact is, its not like this is the first time NJZ have done things themselves outside the scope of the contract with Hybe, the photoshoots and ad deals have all been forwarded by the newjeans instagram account despite the brands and shoots involved not using the newjeans name. Its also not the first performance they've done without Hybe organising it or getting a cut, though they were done without the newjeans name and Hybe didn't publicly do anything then either. I interpreted it as they've made their public statement and stance clear, anything further is beating a dead horse so they are waiting for the legal conclusion so this kind of thing seems ouut of pocket, like someone got angry and went against the agreed approach.

Quote from selfmate

so what if he is or isn't - I'm not saying whether what he did was right or wrong that's not for me to judge since my judgment doesn't matter when there's like a million court cases lol

ultimately again I said that's his rationale for doing what he did - him coming out carries more weight than whoever the head of ADOR is coming

I get that, but I'm saying him coming out doesn't make sense for Hybe and is damaging to those million court cases and thats got to be more damaging to Hybe than allowing them to perform.

Especially since if they perform and Hybe truly thinks they are still under contract, wouldn't that add to their cases by proving Newjeans breached the contract first and make Ador entitled to the payment for the event through damages or even increased damages overall?

Because of the arguments they've made, both sides need to continue acting like they are independent (NJZ) and under contract (Hybe/Ador) and that means everything they do needs to lineup with that argument or risk helping the other side. Trying to stifle them at this point through these kind of means makes it look like they think NJZ's contract really is over so they are trying to make NJZ think they need to go back to Ador to continue in the industry. He is giving ammunition to NJZ's legal team which is why they rebutted so fast saying it was a dispute over the name used. I can understand from a hurt ego POV, but not from a competent CEO in the middle of a legal dispute POV. This seems like he heard the news and lashed out by making the call without consulting anyone or thinking it through.