It’s the app where fans of Blackpink, BTS and other musical acts buy merch, watch videos and interact with their idols: the rise of Weverse
- ‘We didn’t have a database of our customers,’ says Joon Choi, president of Weverse, the app set up by K-pop group BTS’ management agency, Hybe, to remedy that
- Now fans of more than 80 acts, including Blackpink and BTS, communicate, watch music videos and buy merch using the app, which has a global reach beyond K-pop
When Jin became the first member of the K-pop supergroup BTS to enlist for South Korea’s mandatory military service this month, he had a special message to fans on Weverse, a fan platform app that commands more than 8 million active users.
“Now it’s curtain call time (I wanted to say this when I go to military service),” said Jin. Devoted fans posted more than 10,000 replies.
The Weverse platform has proven a major weapon of the K-pop group’s management agency, Hybe, offering fan-oriented experiences interacting with the stars, accessing unique content and buying merchandise, and is now expanding into subscription services and more.
“We are a fandom business,” says Weverse president Joon Choi. “There are bigger global services offering functions we offer, but Weverse’s users are superfans characterised by passionate engagement.”
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Before Weverse launched in 2019 fans were scattered across multiple platforms, says Choi.
“They bought merch here, watched videos there, communicated elsewhere … We didn’t have a database of our customers. So we began developing each service in-house.”
The K-pop industry has revolved around loyalty and personal identification with the stars, making it a “recession-proof” business – revenue is driven by public response to artists’ activities, and upselling is possible, according to analysts.
However, Hybe is now uniquely positioned to harness such a loyal fandom to grow its global business through unit Weverse’s technological reach, offering a growth model for future entertainment, analysts say.
Around 170 out of 300 Weverse employees are engineers, including programmers and UX specialists, Choi says, with veterans from gaming companies or local tech giant Naver, with whom it has a partnership.
More US and Japanese artists are expected to join next year, says Choi but declines to reveal who.
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Hybe acquired Ithaca Holdings, representing Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, in a US$1.05 billion deal in 2021.
Choi, who worked at gaming company Nexon and Baby Shark content creator Pinkfong before joining Weverse, says the app has added services such as live-streaming, Instagram Story-style updates, free and paid content, artist-to-fan interactions and merchandise retailing.
However, Weverse users’ ‘superfan’ qualities make engagement in those services turbocharged, Choi says.
There is no other entertainment agency with such a fan platform
“For example, we do commerce, but there is no seasonality … We have 80 acts, and some of them are always doing something,” he says.
Like K-pop’s popularity, the app is also global. Users are based in more than 200 countries and only about 10 per cent of the app users speak Korean, Choi says. The top five countries Weverse users are from are Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, the United States and South Korea.
“There is no other entertainment agency with such a fan platform with enough users for economy of scale,” says Lee Hye-in, analyst at Yuanta Securities.
“Such a centralised platform was possible because in K-pop, the agency holds the hegemony – whereas in the US for example, the artists are the centre.”
