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On June 19, 2023, FIFTY FIFTY filed a lawsuit against their agency, ATTRAKT, with respect to the disregard for its members' health concerns and unfair distribution of pay, despite the beaming success of their hit single, Cupid. Following the same, Dispatch revealed some intricate details about the group's relationship with ATTRAKT and The Givers on July 4, 2023.
There has been much heat around the three ever since the members raised concerns about making the news of Aran's surgery public without her consent. This was further mounted when the agency insisted she participates in promotional schedules during her recovery period. The Dispatch report, however, seems to suggest that this did not happen.
While the members' lawsuit was against ATTRAKT, Dispatch revealed that it was rather the fault of The Givers, a production company that collaboratively manages the group along with ATTRAKT.
Dispatch breaks down the relations between ATTRAKT and The Givers, sheds light on FIFTY FIFTY's connections with the two
The inception of FIFTY FIFTY
Dispatch starts off by stating the three main components in the formation of FIFTY FIFTY, which saw its initiation back in 2019.
1) ATTRAKT's CEO, Jeon Hong-joon: Born in 1964, he has been the producer of many notable singers like Jo Kwan-woo, Yang Soo-kyung, Bobby Kim, Yoon Mirae, and Ha Sungwoon. While he mostly worked alone, in 2019, he established his own company, ATTRAKT.
2) The Givers' CEO and Chief Producer, Ahn Sung-il: Akin to Jeon Hong-joon, he has also been the producer of significant singers in the industry like J-Walk, Eun Ji Won’s solo, Rumble Fish, etc.
3) KAMP: An US-based production company that's predominantly known for its music festivals in South Korea. Ahn Sung-il worked under the company during the year 2019.
These three figures came together at one of the music festivals held in 2019, KAMP Singapore.
KAMP's CEO and one of the company's employees met with Jeon Hong-joon and Ahn Sung-il and they seemed to collectively agree on Jeon Hong-joon's proposal of creating a global K-pop group. Therefore, KAMP decided to handle the overseas promotion of the company while Ahn Sung-il was sent as the producer for FIFTY FIFTY through KAMP's fund.
In November 2019, the FIFTY project was launched. Two employees from KAMP, B and L, were involved in the creation along with Ahn Sung-il. After gaining trainees between the months of December 2019 and December 2020, the training was initialed with twelve trainees. The same was reduced to five in 2021 and then later to four in 2022, following the monthly evaluations.
However, KAMP's involvement with the project ended in 2021 after a few disagreements in the global promotional strategy. Therafter, ATTRAKT had to find a replacement for FIFTY FIFTY's US promotion, which was Ahn Sung-il.
He, along with KAMP employees, B and L, left the company to start their own initiative, The Givers.
Mounting expenses of The Givers and ATTRAKT for the group's production
As the two establishments started to work together, Jeon Hong-joon took charge of the production and investment aspects of the group, while Ahn Sung-il took care of the training and creation of FIFTY FIFTY. However, given that both the companies were in the initial stages of establishing themselves, producing a girl group, whose average cost comes up to ₩2.00 billion KRW proved difficult for them to manage.
Things like lessons in vocals, music theory, rap, dance, English, personal training, and acting amounted to ₩20.0 - 30.0 million KRW per month. And other expenses when the trainees made separate music videos for their covers to send to ICM, Song Music, and BGM, mounted to ₩1.00 billion KRW.
Additionally, when FIFTY FIFTY debuted with the EP, THE FIFTY, all four songs it carried came with music videos, which cost the company ₩500 million KRW. This was further mounted by the production of the group's hit track music video, Cupid, which summed up to ₩250 million KRW. The establishment of the group cost ATTRAKT and The Givers so much money that Ahn Sung-il had to sell up his own luxury items to invest in the group.
However, all the hard work of Ahn Sung-il came to fruition when FIFTY FIFTY's Cupid flourished in the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Dispatch revealed that the producer, who also goes by the name SIAHN, had to pick one among the 2000 possible songs kept ready for the group. He chose Cupid with the intention to adhere to not just K-pop listeners but also global listeners, keeping in touch with the initial plans of the group's promotion.
Cupid's copyrights and Ah Sung-il's unfair distribution of it
An intriguing fact to note about FIFTY FIFTY's famous track, Cupid, is that it was originally written and produced by students from the Swedish School of Music, namely, Adam Von Mentzer, Mac Felländer-Tsai, and Louise Udin.
But Dispatch reported that the copyright distribution for the song left out the Swedish School of Music students. It was then revealed that Ahn Sung-il had bought the copyright from them under his own name.
This buyout isn't considered illegal, given that the copyrights sit under his name instead of the company's. It also makes his stake sum up to 95.5% when combined with his personal percentage with that of The Givers.
Here's where problems started to arise between Jeon Hoon-jong and Ahn Sung-il, since the former wasn't aware of the latter's buyout of the copyrights.
Aran's surgery and the members' health
The next information that Dispatch revealed was the management of FIFTY FIFTY's health, the very stance on which the members filed a lawsuit against ATTRAKT. However, the fault seems to lie more with The Givers than with ATTRAKT in this case.
The text conversation between Ahn Sung-il and Jeon Hoon-jong during the time of Aran's surgery revealed that they came to a consensus to not talk about the reason for the surgery.
Additionally, employee B also texted ATTRAKT's CEO, asking if the members coud take a break while Aran recovers from the surgery. FIFTY FIFTY was subsequently granted a break of over two weeks between May 10 and May 28. However, even after they returned to the dorms, Aran was still recovering and the promotions for the group were weak.
Soon after, FIFTY FIFTY was given the opportunity to sing for the Barbie movie around the beginning of June. Through a text conversation between Ahn Sung-il and Jeon Hoon-jong released by Dispatch, it was revealed that the former said that he will speak and influence Aran to participate in the project despite her health condition.
This naturally makes the blame fall on The Givers and its CEO and not ATTRAKT when it comes to FIFTY FIFTY's lawsuit against the agency for their lack of consideration with health concerns. Additionally, since Ahn Sung-il bagged so much of the copyrights, the members were naturally paid less than what they had expected. Regarding the same, Jeon Hoon-jong sat down with Dispatch.
“B” said he would take good care of them, so I trusted him and left it to him. I think trusting him too much was the start of all this trouble. When I said I wanted to go to the practice room to see them, he would say that the members are uncomfortable with me being there. I didn’t want to interrupt their practicing, so I just held it in and dealt with it. Just think about how much I also wanted to see them," he said.
It was also pointed out by Dispatch that Ahn Sung-il's LinkedIn page refers to him as the CEO of ATTRAKT. The mounting of the same resulted in Jeon Hoon-jong and ATTRAKT filing a lawsuit against Ahn Sung-il and The Givers.
