LOONA Boycott

Fan Campaign
Name:	LOONA Boycott
Type of Campaign:	Boycott
Aims:	Aiding the LOONA members in their lawsuit against their agency Blockberry Creative
Participants:	Orbits
Date Started:	December 8 2022 - June 19 2023
Fandom:	LOONA
Campaign Website:	LOONA Union's Twitter
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In 2022, LOONA's fandom known as "Orbit" staged a boycott against their entertainment label Blockberry Creative (BBC). This was done in response to member Chuu being expelled from LOONA, and the following revelation that the group was operating under a unfair contract, wherein the members were not earning money, but stuck in perpetual debt. All twelve members had filed for provisional injunction to suspend their contracts, citing a breach of trust, therefore entering into a lawsuit with their company.

A graphic that circulated on Twitter promoting the boycott

To aid LOONA, the fandom staged a boycott against all commercial products, including albums, merchandise, tickets and more. Fans openly pirated all of LOONA's music, to prevent any profit. LOONA Union was created to organise efforts between both international and domestic fanbases. They wrote letters demanding response from BBC. Fans also contacted various K-Pop stores to prevent stocking of albums, with over 240 K-Pop stores worldwide offering support.

It was a successful boycott. Due to low sales, the company indefinitely postponed LOONA's upcoming album. On June 16 2023, it was reported that all remaining members of LOONA had won the lawsuit and terminated their contracts. The members left the company, re-debuting in Loosemble and ARTMS, while Chuu and Yves pursued solo careers.

Background

Blockberry Creative

Blockberry Creative, commonly shortened to BBC, is the entertainment agency for LOONA, formed in 2016. In the early years of the fandom, they were beloved and highly regarded by fans. For example, a fan comment in 2018:

I've been into K-Pop since 2001 and I have never seen any company getting the amount of intense love from fans like BBC does. It is so unusual, but then again, BBC/Loona is not your average K-Pop company/group. So I thought I'd make a thread about all the things we love about BBC and also constructively discuss what exactly they're doing that's better than all the other companies.

This would change in the succeeding years due to a myriad of reasons including significant hiatuses (dubbed "loonathedrought" by fans), mismanagement, staff departures - most notably creative director Jaden Jeong, and various financial difficulties, most notably a lawsuit from investor 'Donuts'. This led to rumours that LOONA was disbanding, resulting in the viral #SaveLOONA trend.

Boycott

LOONA Union

Fans had spoken about a boycott in response to Chuu's departure, but no immediate widespread action was taken. Some fans gathered and created an initial survey nicknamed "Loona Fanbase Action" to garner interest in a possible boycott. This was posted on December 30 and ran for 5 days. Some snippets from the survey:

• 
• 
• 

The result of this survey was the creation of LOONA Union described as an "joint response team of domestic and foreign fanbases". On December 4, LOONA Union releases their first official statement:

Hello, this is LOONA Union.

LOONA Union, a joint response team of domestic and foreign fanbases, was formed in order to condemn Blockberry Creative with the following three goals in mind:

First, full support of the twelve members of LOONA
Second, the continuation of LOONA activities in the future
Third, determining the direction of unified response of and uniting ‘Orbit’

Under three basic goals above and based on the survey that has been conducted, the response team is preparing to undertake further appropriate and effective collective action, and will announce a statement within December 5th KST.

Further, rest assured that the team will take utmost care to ensure that collective fandom protests do not cause harm to the LOONA members.

Thank you.

A day later, this was followed with an official statement, on behalf on the fandom, from LOONA Union, demanding an official statement from Blockberry Creative. If no statement was received, the union would announce a boycott. It is generally believed that LOONA Union was responsible for starting the boycott.

We demand an official feedback to Blockberry Creative

Official Statement from LOONA Union

Hello, this is LOONA Union.

On November 25th, LOONA’s management agency Blockberry Creative posted a malicious notice regarding LOONA member Chuu. A few days later, it was reported that LOONA members were involved in a lawsuit with Blockberry Creative, which has previously engaged in wage theft, non-payment of earnings distributions, and unfair treatment and overworking the members during the world tour.

Following the notice and reports, we solicited diverse opinions from Orbit, the fandom of LOONA, through a survey administered by the response team and other outlets; numerous viewpoints and concerns regarding this situation were observed. LOONA Union, a joint response team of domestic and foreign fanbases, was formed in order to condemn Blockberry Creative for the above wrongdoings, with the following three goals in mind:

i) Full support of the twelve members of LOONA and their lawsuit on contract termination
ii) The continuation of LOONA activities in the future
iii) Determining the direction of unified response of and uniting ‘Orbit’

With this statement, LOONA Union demands a formal explanation from Blockberry Creative about:

1. The groundless exposé regarding LOONA member Chuu
2. The unfair treatment of LOONA members during the world tour
3. The legal conflict with LOONA members that it is engaged in

If Blockberry Creative does not post an explanation by the end of December 7, 2022, or if the contents of such are deemed to be inadequate, LOONA Union will announce a boycott on paid products such as SuperStar LOONA and official merchandise, along with additional collective action starting December 8.

The response team is preparing to undertake further appropriate and effective collective action, and is planning to issue further announcements as the situation unfolds.

December 5th, 2022
이달의소녀 연합 대응팀 LOONA UNION

The statement was supported by a large number of Orbits, but received some criticism, for it's wording, having an unreasonable deadline, inclusion of the world tour and more. There was no response from Blockberry Creative. As promised, the collective released a statement on December 8, declaring the boycott:

Boycott Infographic

Hello, this is LOONA Union.

BlockBerry Creative has not responded within the previously posed deadline of December 7th. As a result, as of December 8th, we are announcing a boycott of all paid products from BlockBerry Creative (including merchandise and albums) and SuperStar LOONA (ads and purchases).

The purpose of the boycott is to protest BlockBerry Creative's mistreatment of LOONA, show solidarity with the members, and caution potential business partners of BlockBerry Creative regarding the risks they face by working with them. The response team will continue boycotting until the accusatory statements against Chuu are retracted, an apology is made with regards to past mistreatment, and LOONA members are given the option to terminate their contract, if they wish to do so.

The scope of the boycott is detailed below, and is based on a previously administered survey (7,506 domestic and international Orbit respondents; percentages in parentheses indicate approval rates of the given measure):

• No purchasing of merchandise packages (93.07%)
  • Including Season’s Greetings, Orbit Fanclub, Summer Packages, etc.
• No purchasing of general merchandise (89.57%)
  • Including lightsticks, apparel, photo books, etc.
• No purchasing of albums (83.16%)
  • Including physical and digital albums
• No purchases or watching ads on Superstar LOONA (86.29%)
• Full boycott of all SuperStar LOONA use (79.14%)
  • Including purchasing packages, watching ads, and playing
• No purchasing points or watching ads on FAB (74.02%)
• No purchasing of tickets for paid events (68.81%)
  • Including online and offline concerts, fan meetings, showcases, etc.
• No streaming content published by BlockBerry Creative (59.74%)
  • This includes music videos, Loona TV and Loona Notes; music on premium streaming services, etc.
  • This does not include solo content such as OSTs, Good Neighbors, etc. (42.47% approved boycotting)
• Unfollow BlockBerry Creative on all social media (88.86%)
  • This includes @BBC_blockberry on Twitter and @blockberrycreative_official on Instagram
  • This does not include @loonatheworld on Instagram, Twitter, Weibo or @loonatheworld_official on TikTok (34.09% approved boycotting)

All other categories not listed above did not reach the 50% mark, and are excluded from the boycott scope.

The key principle behind LOONA Union is to support the members and their choices as fans. We sincerely apologize for any possible misunderstandings that may have arisen in stating this objective in our first statement. Also, to address certain concerns, this response team exists only to gather the opinions of Orbits who support LOONA. We will not engage in any actions that overstep the boundaries of a fandom.

Thank you.

As noted by The Michigan Daily, the fanbase had effectively unionized similar to that of a traditional labor protest.

Fans most prominently utilized Twitter to carry out this boycott, with update accounts such as LOONA Union providing detailed guidance for fans via hashtags and infographics. LOONA Union is particularly incredible — it’s helped to bring awareness to unfair working conditions and contracts within the K-pop industry. Fans are now unionizing for their idols, using traditional labor protest procedures in hopes of fixing these issues. It’s amazing to see just how much support LOONA has garnered, sparking discussions about exploitation and unionization.

Music Streaming

LOONA 1/3's Spotify account was hacked, urging fans to boycott

To prevent the label from gaining profit from streams on platforms like YouTube or Spotify, fans would engage in piracy and repost all content on different platforms. For example, fan translation group Team Subbits held an archive of all music videos, behind the scenes, and variety content like LOONA TV. Fans also uploaded all music videos to Google Drive and circulated links. A well-known resource was loonatherepost, a site made to share "boycott resources".

The official Spotify account for LOONA 1/3 was hacked, with it's description replaced with a note urging fans to boycott:

"DO NOT STREAM ANYTHING HERE EXCEPT FOR You and Me Together. YOU ARE GIVING BBC MONEY TO MAKE LAWSUIT AGAINST THE GIRLS. zlata and twelveM were here<3"

The hacker also reposted various LOONA's songs under a fake Spotify account called "twelveM". They received a takedown request for the "Flip That" album by Warner Music Group. Besides this, much of the reposts still remain, becoming a verified account, and as of 2024, receiving over 32.2k monthly listeners. Yeojin has even used the twelveM version of the song "Rosy" on an Instagram post.

Fans have also tried other ways to circumvent the Spotify system. For example, some fans used the local files feature to listen to LOONA's music. Other fans have reuploaded the songs as podcasts. Many of these are often titled with "boycott ver." Both of these strategies will successfully prevent BlockBerry Creative from receiving any profit from streams, but allow for fans to listen to LOONA's music on Spotify.

According to loona stats, over the course of the boycott, the group received a -73.2% decrease in Spotify streams.

Unfollowing Social Media

Fans mass unfollowed many of the social media accounts associated with LOONA, such as Instagram, Twitter and more. For example, @loonatheworld on most platforms, or the agency's account @blockberrycreative_official. On Twitter, loonatherepost was created. This account reposted all official tweets from the loonatheworld account, allowing fans to access them while unfollowing the main account.

According to loona stats, LOONA lost over -577k followers across all social media platforms combined.

Response from LOONA

In an interview with Nylon, JinSoul comments on the boycott:

When asked about the boycott, JinSoul and Choerry throw furtive looks at each other and smile. “Fans’ beliefs in the appropriate pathway that we should walk motivated them to do actions that support all the LOONA members, including us,” says JinSoul. “They did their best, and thanks to that we're standing here right now.”

In a Bubble livestream, Haseul comments on the fan petitions. The following is summarised notes by fan translator Litell_Johnn:

• Haseul thinks it's a little funny when people say she shouldn't talk about the "hard times", when everyone already knows what happened
• She discussed the fan petitions submitted to the court, and says the petitions were very helpful personally for her and also helped the case
• She knows that's not easy to write something like that, and it's basically treating someone else like your family or a close person
• Realized that there are a lot of people in the chat who wrote petitions
• When the lawyer sent her a lengthy message about the verdict, she couldn't even bring herself to read even the first line and she was shaking. When she read the words "they ruled in your favor", she screamed and immediately called her father who also got excited

Aftermath

Loona Independence Day

The LOONA members were granted suspension from their contract on different dates. However, by June 16, 2022, all twelve members were granted contract suspensions and left Blockberry Creative. This day, June 16, has since been celebrated in the fandom as "Loona Independence Day".

Further Reading

• LOONA’s betrayal: A story about the power of K-pop fans by Katelyn Sliwinski (The Michigan Daily)