A shocking email revelation has sent waves through the courtroom, shedding new light on the ongoing dispute between ADOR and HYBE.
The email, submitted as evidence during a hearing on May 17th, contains explosive details that are leaving fans and industry insiders reeling.
It was revealed that HYBE is reportedly in talks with overseas producers to negotiate settlement fees for LE SSERAFIM’s plagiarized songs.
Besides that, according to CEO Min, when the NewJeans Get Up album dropped, HYBE suggested they push 100,000 copies to potentially surpass aespa’s debut record. However, ADOR shot down the idea, citing it as contradictory to their business values.
ADOR shared that they refused to push albums because they were worried that NewJeans’ authentic number-one records, achieved without artificial sales boosts, would be compromised. This could also harm the business opportunities that came with those achievements.
However, HYBE quickly denied this claim, stating that their labels don’t engage in album manipulation. They pointed out that this was already discussed with ADOR and even mentioned in a social media conversation between HYBE’s CEO and Min Hee Jin.
HBYE’s CEO Park Jiwon emphasized that ADOR has repeatedly made baseless accusations about other artists’ album sales, including SEVENTEEN and TXT.
HYBE investigated allegations of album manipulation and found that returns were made for two previous albums, totaling 140,000 units (0.32% of total sales). However, these returns were made without a contractual agreement and were immediately addressed by strengthening internal controls.
Additionally, HYBE revealed that ADOR had initially planned to produce 3.5 million albums for Get Up due to an overestimation of market demands but currently has 1.61 million unsold albums in stock.
HYBE disagreed with the definition of “pushing out” albums, which means artificially increasing sales. They stated this definition unfairly applies to NewJeans’ album sales. Furthermore, it was revealed that ADOR sold 150,000 albums to a Japanese distributor, leaving 110,000 extra copies.
To meet this demand, ADOR held an additional fan signing event on August 20, 2023, featuring all NewJeans members. HYBE pointed out that this type of sales promotion is common, but it’s inconsistent to consider it fair when NewJeans does it, while labeling similar actions by other artists as “pushing out”.