FIFTY FIFTY
ATTRAKT CREATIVE CONTENT GROUP
After taking off on TikTok, FIFTY FIFTY’s second single, “Cupid,” cracked the Billboard Hot 100 in March. It shocked many in the K-pop scene — not just because the quartet was only four months into its career and had 18.9 million official U.S. on-demand song streams, according to Luminate, but because it’s the first group to debut under ATTRAKT Creative Content Group.
The company calls its newcomer status an advantage. “We are a small team that benefits from achieving faster results with more flexible decision-making processes,” explains
SIAHN, founder/CEO of The Givers, a creative K-pop consulting firm that also manages FIFTY FIFTY alongside ATTRAKT. “Unlike traditional K-pop companies, we approach our artists with flexibility and personal communication, resulting in more authentic and natural performances from the girls. Our streamlined communication structure is something that larger companies often lack due to their complex organizational hierarchies.”
FIFTY FIFTY’s name references its complementary styles on each release.
Debut EP THE FIFTY included the hard-hitting girl-power anthem “Log In” and dreamy, R&B-pop love song “Higher,” while the Korean version of “Cupid” had a rap to draw in K-pop fans as well as a rap-less English version serviced to international audiences.
Members Saena, Keena, Sio and Aran (who range from 18 to 20 in age) want to keep growing and “broaden our musical spectrum,” Aran says. To that end, for the group, ATTRAKT is shying from the traditional K-pop business arrangements that tend to bind artists to their labels’ established modes of promotion and
management. “We plan to propose a new label structure for FIFTY FIFTY — a separate label for them, solely concentrating on the artist’s development,” says SIAHN. “K-pop companies have an entrenched ‘artist-agency’ relationship, which poses a significant obstacle to an artist’s long-term global expansion. To overcome this persistent problem, The Givers is exploring a structure where the label directly contracts with the artist while the main producer oversees the creative aspects of the group and collaborates with the label.”