This is a really startling turn of events. ATTRAKT, the company that created the K-pop group Fifty Fifty, which has gone viral this year for the absolutely massive success of the song “Cupid,” will sue the producer of all their music, The Givers CEO Ahn Sung-il (“Siahn”). Via allkpop, Siahn and The Givers are alleged to have obstructed business, committed fraud, and breached trust, with acts including “deleting project data, delaying tasks, deleting company’s mail accounts,” among other things. ATTRAKT also claims that Siahn illegally and surreptitiously bought the copyright to “Cupid,” and there are further claims that Warner Music Korea (the international distributor of Fifty Fifty) has basically been working with The Givers to poach Fifty Fifty away from ATTRAKT.
“During the process of purchasing the song ‘Cupid’ from a foreign composer, The Givers did not provide information to ATTRAKT on the purchase of copyrights. The CEO and the company did it themselves secretly,” alleged ATTRAKT.
This is an extraordinarily messy situation for several reasons. First of all, ATTRAKT has in the past been thought of as having three leaders, and Siahn is viewed as one of them. In fact, Siahn has been described at times (and has described himself) as an ATTRAKT co-CEO. Fifty Fifty and Siahn seem to enjoy a good working relationship too. This creates a bizarre King Solomon situation where it’s hard to say what is really the best outcome for the Fifty Fifty members… which is incredibly fitting, considering the name of the group.
Fifty Fifty member Aran is currently recovering from surgery, but the group is scheduled to perform at KCON 2023 in Los Angeles on August 19. They also prominently have a new song releasing as part of the Barbie movie soundtrack in July, called “Barbie Dreams” (feat. Kali), which will be their first new song since “Cupid.” This pivotal moment for the young Fifty Fifty is almost genuinely the worst possible time for ATTRAKT to sue its producer, and the conflict is becoming really public, as evidenced by this bizarre moment of the group’s fan cafe being temporarily taken down today:
Hello, this is ATTRAKT.
We would like to inform you about the attempted shutdown of the official FIFTY FIFTY fan café that occurred at around 3pm today. pic.twitter.com/4SlHDUciqx— FIFTY FIFTY Official (@we_fiftyfifty) June 27, 2023
Update 6/28/23: All four Fifty Fifty members have now filed in court to break their exclusive contracts with ATTRAKT itself, claiming ATTRAKT breached the terms of their contracts. Their law representation also claims that basically all of the fuss that ATTRAKT has made in the past week about “external” forces trying to poach the group is just a lot of smoke to draw attention away from the fact that the company has done nothing to address the problems that the Fifty Fifty members had brought to the company’s attention. In other words, it’s starting to sound like ATTRAKT is the villain in all this, because there is no reason for four young idols at the peak of their careers to enter a legal battle and jeopardize what they’ve achieved unless they feel earnestly violated.
