Days after a company founded to release solo music by members of K-pop group EXO declared “war” on the stars' longtime label and management company SM Entertainment over a contract dispute, the K-pop giant has filed a lawsuit against his musical trio.
As reported by Korea JoongAng Daily, SM filed a civil lawsuit on Wednesday (June 12) against Chen, Baekhyun, and Xiumin — who are also known as the EXO-CBX trio — seeking a 10% royalties payment that it claims the stars have been avoiding for two months . According to SM, the singers agreed to pay the fee on a contract signed last year as part of an agreement that allowed them to continue their solo endeavors outside of SM — and pay a reduced distribution fee for their solo music distributed by new majority shareholder of SM Kakao — while continuing group activities as EXO and EXO-CBX under the K-pop giant.
At a press conference on Monday (June 10) held by representatives of INB100 — Baekhyun's start-up label founded in 2023 that also signed Chen and Xiumin for their respective solo careers — Cha Ga-wonthe chairman and majority shareholder of INB100's holding company One Hundred, accused SM of imposing a 10% copyright fee on the members' stage names, as well as the names EXO and EXO-CBX, in exchange for a discount on distribution fees for their solo efforts. However, INB100 representatives maintain that SM has failed to deliver its end of the deal, which they claim relieves INB100 of its obligation to pay 10% of the IP royalties. INB100 representatives further claimed that the company had sent an official letter of complaint to SM in April, but that the K-pop giant never responded.
In the wake of the press conference, SM sent out a press release disputing the claims. In the statement, the company claimed that the 10% copyright fee was settled through court mediation when previous EXO members left the group while still under contract — namely Kris Wu, Luhan and Tao, who all left between 2014 and 2015. SM also claimed that the stars' contracts with the company are still valid and that the trio is benefiting from the EXO brand but not fulfilling their contractual obligations, despite the company acting in good faith with the lower distribution rate. The company also claimed that it failed to respond to the INB100 format complaint letter because it did not want to distract from the release of new music releases by EXO members Chen, DO and Suho last month.
The dispute that erupted this month comes almost exactly a year after Chen, Baekhyun, and Xiumin first took legal action against SM over what they considered “slave contracts,” though that dispute was later settled when the trio chose to maintain their exclusive contracts with SM. .
Earlier this week, rumors circulated that an upcoming EXO album was in jeopardy as a result of the lawsuits. But on Tuesday (June 11), INB100 released a statement clarifying that the issues have nothing to do with EXO and that EXO-CBX will “fervently participate in EXO's full group activities with SM in the future.” SM later backed up this statement by saying that “there has been no further discussion of plan changes” for new music. EXO's most recent release was the group's seventh studio album Existswhich fell last July.
