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Weverse

Last week, HYBE — the Korean label and music company behind BTS, among others — announced that Jason Jaesung Lee would become its new CEO, replacing Jiwon Park, as part of what it dubbed its “HYBE 2.0” strategy. Today (Aug. 1), the company unveiled more specifics as to what that will start to look like.
HYBE says the strategy kicked off at the top of the year, and will see the company lean into its superfandom platform, Weverse, around the world, while also partnering with other companies globally “to adapt to the fast-evolving market landscape,” the company said in a press release.

The priorities the company laid out will reorganize the company — which had previously been structured as Label, Solution and Platform — into a broader Music, Platform and “Tech-driven future growth initiatives” framework. As part of that, the company laid out four new initiatives and several executive-level appointments with new leaders atop its reformed division.

Trending on Billboard

The first is the formation of HYBE Music Group APAC, which will encompass the company’s labels in Korea and Japan, which will focus on doubling down on the company’s strengths and strategies in that region and exporting them around the globe. The current president of BIGHIT Music, Young Jae Shin, who has helped oversee the success of BTS and Tomorrow X Together, will now take on the role of president of HYBE APAC and lead the Korean and Japanese labels’ global growth.

The second is a doubling-down on what the company calls its “multi-home, multi-genre” strategy in the U.S., Japan and Latin America. That will mean a new label service launched under HYBE America — which is led by Scooter Braun — that will bring in a management element to its current label operations, in a bid to “bring the K-pop methodology to the American pop scene.” As part of that, HYBE America says it signed a new U.S.-based group, KATSEYE, through its continued partnership with Geffen Records. The company also said that its HYBE Latin America division — whose CEO Jonghyun “JH” Kah recently spoke to Billboard about their plans — will ramp up beginning in 2025, while HYBE Japan will continue to roll out new artists as well under newly-appointed chairman Youngmin Kim, who until now had served as general manager of SM Entertainment.

The third is the launch of a subscription membership tier for superfan platform Weverse, which will go live in the fourth quarter of 2024 and be available to all artists who use the platform. That will include ad-free videos, digital membership cards and a private Weverse DM feature, while the main Weverse platform will begin incorporating ads. Weverse president Joon Choi spoke to Billboard two weeks ago (July 19) about the platform’s plans moving forward, as well as the onboarding of Ariana Grande onto the platform, joining many of the Korean artists already in the HYBE stable. (Grande, who cut ties with Braun and HYBE last year, resumed working with them in June.)

Finally, HYBE is planning to “merge content with technology,” which it says will “ensure mid to long-term growth” for the company. That is where HYBE’s investments in gaming, AI, audio and voice technology and integrated online/offline experiences will live moving forward.

“HYBE 2.0 focuses on fostering our future growth businesses centered on music, platform and technology,” newly-announced CEO Lee said in a statement. “HYBE will continue to excel in the music industry, solidify its position as the leading player in the superfan business, and secure long-term growth drivers through tech-driven future growth initiatives.”

In a move that highlights her selective engagement with social media, Ariana Grande, who deactivated her Twitter account years ago but remains the seventh-most-followed person on Instagram, is set to join HYBE’s superfan platform, Weverse.
Weverse Company tells Billboard that the chart-topping star will join the platform on Sunday (July 21), adding to a roster that includes BTS, BLACKPINK, JVKE, NCT 127, (G)I-DLE, Lauv, YOASOBI, Conan Gray, AKB48 and thuy. In joining the platform, Grande will have the ability to post messages and content to her own dedicated community, hold livestreams for members, read personalized fan letters, upload exclusive media content, share disappearing messages, and utilize the popular Weverse Shop, which sold more than 18 million pieces of merchandise last year to fans in more than 198 countries.

The announcement marks a significant moment for both Grande and Weverse, opening up a new way for the singer to deepen her connection with fans while showing a commitment to her continued business relationship with HYBE and HYBE America CEO (and Grande’s former manager) Scooter Braun.

Trending on Billboard

Since opening in June 2019 with Billboard 200 chart-toppers TOMORROW X TOGETHER as its first artist, Weverse now hosts 146 artists from countries including South Korea, Japan and the U.S. Its biggest artist community, for BTS, boasts 26 million members, while the ENHYPEN community has 9.8 million. Today, HYBE reports over 155 million lifetime downloads and an average of 10 million monthly active users across 245 countries and regions, with 90% of its user base now coming from outside Korea. Despite Warner Music Group (WMG) announcing plans for its own superfan app — as well as WMG and Sony investing early in rival superfan platform Fave — Weverse says its start with K-pop artists delivered important insights to entice top Western stars like Grande to join.

“What’s lucky for us has been that K-pop idols are the types of artists that have a very strong core fanbase,” Joon Choi, president of Weverse Company, tells Billboard of the company’s half-decade of growth that now includes investment from Universal Music Group. “As a platform and a business, we had already enjoyed the competitive edge or advantage of being there first and being there early to observe what superfans actually want.”

While artists can use Weverse to access first-party data for content delivery, promotion and to stay connected to international fans, the platform has expanded opportunities in live music with not only event streaming but its Weverse Con Festival and a Weverse by Fans tool through which fans can develop their own merch.

“We were there earlier and we have a long experience of observing the demands of our fans,” Choi adds. “That’s why we were able to create this one-stop fan service that includes merch development, merch selling, communities, videos, live streaming and even magazines…I do see the growth of startups or services that are entering this particular [superfan] market and that’s good. The more competition in the market is actually better for us because being the only player in that particular market sector makes us nervous.”

New competitors or not, Weverse continues to expand; currently, the company boasts a total of 400 employees in South Korea, 60 in Tokyo, and 20 in Santa Monica, Calif. (with the target to grow to 30 this year). And with a major star like Grande, there’s a slew of Arianators that could soon be joining the platform. Still, the executive admits he doesn’t know what to expect from the Eternal Sunshine singer once she officially joins. As he puts it, “It is totally up to the artists.”

Read on for more insights from Joon about Grande’s big move and what lies in store for Weverse’s future.

Weverse is adding new artists all the time, but Ariana Grande is a huge name with a worldwide fanbase. What have the weeks been like leading up to this announcement?

I just traveled a lot; I’ve been a globetrotter. We have offices in Santa Monica and Tokyo, and in each office location our leaders are currently meeting and contacting many artists and labels, so I believe our platform and business are becoming truly international and crossing borders. As we do that, we have opportunities to engage with and work with big artists, but also rising stars, so these opportunities are being created.

In the past, Weverse or artists have held special events or activities to begin their time on the platform. Will Ariana have a welcome party?

My simple answer to that question is that it is totally up to the artists. So, although we do have sessions where we offer guidelines or guidance in terms of how to better utilize the platform to cultivate the superfan culture or fandom, we do not necessarily engage too much [in terms of] planning activities or what’s going on the Weverse platform. I know that this might not be the direct answer that you’re looking for, but we have artists onboarded onto Weverse with a very good understanding of the difference between Weverse and other social media platforms.

What opportunities do you see for Weverse in welcoming Ariana Grade, and what opportunities are now open to Ariana?

Weverse is definitely a distinct platform, different from other social media platforms, so I’m also very curious how it will be utilized by artists like Ariana Grande. It really depends on each artist or label whether they discuss details about how they want to or plan to utilize Weverse. But in this particular case, we don’t know yet — that’s something that I’m closely watching.

But I would like to add that when I look at Weverse from my perspective as the leader of this business, it’s important to have enough resources and big enough clusters of a particular genre, specific country or culture. So, that’s why we’ve been working hard to onboard many artists. During the first half of this year alone, we have onboarded Nightly, thuy, Lauv, Umi, Conan Gray and JVKE. And then we have Ariana Grande. But Gracie Abrams has been very active as well; she’s good. So, when you see Weverse as a platform and in terms of the growth of our platform, it is very important that we have thriving clusters of certain music genres, countries or cultures to generate a network effect as well.

Weverse does a lot of business selling music, albums and merchandise via Weverse Shop, but Ariana isn’t only involved in music: she has R.E.M Beauty and perfumes; she’s in movies and television. Does she give you opportunities to expand into new commerce markets?

I can’t comment on an artist’s existing merchandise lines or albums since there must be agreements or contracts in terms of production and distribution in place. How merchandise is developed and sold through Weverse really varies by each artist. But a feature that we have on Weverse, Weverse by Fans, has been very effective and is gaining a lot of attention from artists because it is based on fan demand. Also, Weverse by Fans doesn’t require a minimum quantity of manufacturing goods for production. So, as soon as there’s enough demand for a certain type of merch, we can immediately produce and sell those.

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On one hand, Ariana Grande is one of the most followed people on Instagram, but she also deactivated her Twitter years ago and takes social media breaks. How were discussions with an artist who might have complex feelings about social media?

That’s a very good question. Actually, when we meet a lot of artists, we tell the artists to actively use other social media because Weverse is a little different. It’s a place where people who love the artist gather. This isn’t our claim — artists have been saying this particular characteristic makes Weverse a very friendly and safer platform for artists to engage with their fans and the public compared to [other] social media…and that’s not just specific to big-name artists. We have been having opportunities to work with rising rookies as well. We don’t really care whether it’s a big-brand artist or not; what’s more important for us is to seek and discover artists interested in cultivating superfan culture, regardless of how famous or how popular they are, to work with us and use Weverse.

Ariana is the seventh-most-followed person in the world on Instagram. Do you worry that adding an artist with such a wide audience could open Weverse up to trolls or those with bad intentions?

Our product features are already equipped and have the advantage of features like filtering, reporting and in-house moderators to prevent and manage ill-intended activities on Weverse’s platform. I do understand the concern that you raised regarding such potential, and I agree with you. However, such circumstances or ill-intended activities occurred for artists already onboarded on Weverse. So, it would not just be for Ariana Grande that such a thing could happen. But I believe we have about four years’ know-how in operating and managing trolls or activities like that. So, we are not too worried, although we are still being very, very cautious about how to manage that.

I’d add that we always tell artists when onboarded to Weverse that the best use case has been using live broadcasts to communicate with fans directly. K-pop artists have been doing so well in terms of using Weverse as a platform for that, and also through the membership, they can have closer, more direct interactions with their fans as well. So, we’ve been telling artists from the inception, from the moment that they are onboarded to Weverse, that these are some of the ways that are historically proven to be very effective to have a very long-term and sustainable fandom relationship.

What is the onboarding process like? Are you personally meeting top artists?

We’re not a service that allows anyone to sign up, [like] on a website like YouTube or other social media. We don’t know when that’s going to happen, maybe in the far future we will switch to such a model. But so far, we have been doing internal research to discover and identify artists who would have a potential benefit or whose fanbase overlaps with the user base of Weverse. These days we are getting a lot of inbound inquiries from artists or other labels themselves. In the past, we used to do a lot of outreach to discover or find more artists, but since last year, as words such as “superfan” and “Weverse” have become more buzzy in the industry and the market, we have been gaining a lot of attention.

It’s not just me but other teams; we call it a B2B team in Korea, but maybe in the United States, it’s called a customer success management team. We have internal resources that frequently discuss and follow up with labels and artists.

I’m personally curious as someone in media, do you ever imagine a day you might expand the type of people beyond musicians?

Definitely. We already have some actors and actresses onboarded, but this question is really good. We’ve thought about it, but the timeline is very important. The ultimate goal of Weverse is to create a superfan not only for human artists. While I believe Weverse is currently working the best for superfans of a person with a thriving fandom, we’ve already seen an interesting case of the virtual idol group in Korea called PLAVE with a significantly high engagement level within their community on Weverse, which is very, very noteworthy. That’s where we saw the potential of expanding this platform not just for human artists but also for virtual artists. However, we also see the possibility of extending this IP to include other types of artists; this is a fun future that we can imagine at the moment. We still have a lot of room for further growth within the music industry so that’s where we have greater focus.

Since you said this was your personal curiosity, I’m giving you my personal opinion and projection on that potential. [Laughs] My biggest question working at Weverse is, “How many people out of the entire human population would have the ‘superfan’ DNA?” That’s kind of the ultimate thing we are looking for. Someone might be a superfan of a certain sport or sports team — there’s always a superfan of something or someone.

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There’s the Weverse Con Festival, Weverse Magazine, there’s exclusive shows to stream. Why is Weverse developing IP beyond the platform? I imagine a HYBE Festival would be well received.

Weverse is a platform, so neutrality is the greatest value that we really emphasize and prioritize, which has been the case since Chairman Bang [Si-Hyuk] originated this platform. From day one, we really valued neutrality as an important value for us, but also in using such a new business model, we believe that we can lead innovation in the music industry. When you look back on the music industry’s history for the last two or three decades, it started by simply selling albums, then the touring business rose, and since 2000, technology has been disrupting the music industry. Now, it’s time for us to seek the answer to what’s next, right? I think Weverse is a platform and a business that has been most actively conducting experiments in order to answer what’s next for the music industry. If our experiments succeed, we can definitely offer benefits to artists all around the world, and that has been the basic philosophical foundation for our business and platform. We’re very, very, very, very serious about it.

Some people here might not like what I’m just about to say, but considering all the other [types of] content — it can be TV shows, movies, video games, everything — we think music itself, just as a piece of content, is the least compensated compared to all the others. So, we really have to think about that from a business perspective. …There is way more around music, right? There is no doubt that music is the core — and that’s why the mission statement of HYBE is, “We believe in music” — and that’s where we started from. [But] to make it a sustainable business, that’s where we can evolve from.

It was fun to see JYP Entertainment founder J.Y. Park perform with Chairman Bang at Weverse Con Festival last month. JYP is one of the last big K-pop agencies not on Weverse. Was this a hint?

We’ve always wanted all the artists from JYP, no doubt! [Laughs] But this time, it was just about the music. But of course, we’ve always wanted JYP — simple!

Removing yourself from work for a second, who or what are you a superfan of?

I’ve been a very big [music] fan since the ’80s: I listened to Casey Kasem with America’s Top 10, I was a Billboard kid. I think about all the famous songs and artists from the ’80s and ’90s — I’m that old guy [Laughs] — and then I had the recent memorable experience with PLAVE. The DJ JoJo [Wright] from KIIS FM actually visited Weverse Con Festival, held a lot of interviews with artists performing, and mentioned that one of the most impressive interviews he had was with PLAVE. From my perspective, from the ’80s and ’90s to virtual artists on the radio, that’s a very interesting journey to see and experience.

Weverse seems to fly under most of the music industry’s radar despite its strategic importance to its owner, HYBE, the K-pop juggernaut that has successfully leveraged BTS’s success to build an increasingly global, technologically advanced music company.

The social media company’s 10 million monthly active users — 90% of which come from outside South Korea — are few by some standards. TikTok, Instagram and Facebook boast more than 1 billion apiece. But it’s the home turf for artists with some of the most loyal fanbases on the planet. And HYBE is leveraging those acts’ popularity to build a must-visit destination for fans of K-pop and, eventually, other genres, too.

When Jimin, a member of BTS, performed a solo show at Lollapalooza in 2023, it was livestreamed on Weverse. When Jung Kook, another BTS member, hosted an at-home livestream in February, Weverse drew 16 million real-time views. When HYBE group ENHYPEN performed a showcase for its Dark Blood EP, it brought 2.4 million real-time views to the platform.

Artists use Weverse to host live chats with fans to promote new albums and its e-commerce platform to sell merchandise. Last year, Weverse Shop sold over 18 million branded light sticks from K-pop group Seventeen, a handheld device used at the band’s concerts that carries a $64 price tag in the United States.

All of this feels like it’s just the beginning. As K-pop surges in popularity globally, Weverse’s traffic is on the rise. Last year, its average user spent 250 minutes on the platform and visited 10.2 days per month, up from 171 minutes and 9.2 days in 2022. Traffic was up 47% in Africa and 25% in the Middle East. It now has 117 artist communities, including 13 SM Entertainment artists — including Super Junior, Riize and NCT Wish — who joined in September. And as Weverse president Joon Choi explained in an interview with Billboard, the company’s next target is the United States.

Do artists bring their fans to Weverse, or do they tap into the passionate user base you have?

That happens in both ways. Existing Weverse users contributed a lot to the new community of the SM Entertainment artists. But, at the same time, we could clearly see the new user registration spike right after SM artists joined Weverse. So, we’re very happy with this kind of migration. It happened with no hassle.

What about adding artists from the United States to Weverse? Many artists under the HYBE umbrella could be potentially added to the platform to reach new fans.

That’s still in discussion. I think we can come up with more exciting news in the near future.

Weverse has an office in Los Angeles [in Santa Monica]. What are you doing to build Weverse and build the brand in the United States?

The first thing is we are aggressively hiring people who would serve the basic functions including commerce functions, as well as artist support. In terms of raising and improving market awareness, I think that’s something we will be more aggressively working on in 2024. So, as we gain the momentum from new artists and North American artists joining and creating communities on Weverse in America, we will aggressively work on raising the market awareness this year.

Fandom is a word that has become more commonplace as K-pop has grown more popular. I think it’s also a tough word to define properly. How do you define fandom?

I think there are multiple segments — or I would say cohorts — among users of our services. Starting from light listeners, and then we would have more active listeners, we would probably consider them being monthly subscribers to Spotify or Apple, they will be probably the more active listener. And then on top of that there must be a cohort that is more engaged. And those will be probably concertgoers or those people who actively purchase albums of these particular artists. From that particular cohort or user segment, we will probably call them fans. As their engagement level goes up, and they become more active in their fan activities, they will be considered the most dedicated or enthusiastic fans. When you think about any business, you think about the framework of the user acquisition funnel from the very top to the bottom. When it goes to the very bottom, the core of the users, there are users or fans who are ready to purchase whatever the artist is offering. So, from the very bottom to the top, Weverse climbs up to the light users.

What specifically does Weverse do to help serve artists’ superfans better than other social platforms or a streaming platform like Spotify?

Before Weverse, the superfan experience was scattered here and there. You buy merch here, you go to the concert, and you get together in some places. Those experiences were all scattered around. But I think Weverse was the first service to get everything together in the best, [most] convenient way. Number two would be global. To go global, we really value the importance of translation. So, we provide real-time translation in 15 languages.

How does how does Weverse make money? Is it advertising? Is it taking a percentage of sales?

When it comes to advertising, we don’t have it yet, but we are working on it. So, we’re going to launch our advertising service this year. And before that, basically we get a revenue share from album sales, merch sales or any kind of digital value provided to the fans.

I’ve noticed a lot of merchandise for sale. How do you fulfill those orders? Do you have partners in different countries to help?

When it comes to a commerce system, we built everything in-house except for the fulfillment side. Obviously, we have international fulfillment partners. We have warehouses in Korea, Japan and the U.S. — in Carson, south of L.A. So, we get orders from more than 200 countries around the world. We ship everywhere.

You sell CDs, correct, and digital downloads?

Correct.

Do fans in Korea still buy CDs and download albums and tracks in high numbers?

They do both, obviously. Physical albums still do very high volume. And on top of that, Weverse also tries to provide digital/physical experiences together. That’s the reason why we launched Weverse Album last year, which is basically an album without a CD. The album comes with the QR code, then users can download the original high-quality music source and enjoy within Weverse.

What’s more popular in Korea, CDs or vinyl?

CDs. Vinyl is not as popular as in the U.S.

You launched Weverse by Fans, which allows users to customize merchandise. Can you tell me how many artists are using that and what the early results have been?

Currently, Weverse by Fans is in the beta phase. As of now, we have eight Korean artists who are using the Weverse by Fans: TOMORROW X TOGETHER, ENHYPEN, Le Sserafim, NewJeans, BOYNEXTDOOR, XIA, Hwang Min Hyun and Baekho.

Weverse does live streaming, whether it’s live performance or chats with artists. How important is that to Weverse?

Weverse Live is highly important to us. Weverse Live offers many different layers that I would say are different types of livestreaming. With the first one, we might have some special arrangement celebrating or marking an album’s release or album showcase. So, Weverse Live can be used for that. And there can be more instant or casual livestreaming, using the Weverse Live as well. The Lollapalooza performance that BTS member Jimin did last year, that was on Weverse Live as well. Weverse Live offers many different types of livestreaming starting from very large-scale concert streaming to a very casual or instant livestreaming done by individual artists.

I would like to add the three reasons why Weverse Live is of great value and importance to Weverse. First, after we release the service, Weverse Live, the users’ duration [of visit] and also their likelihood of revisiting Weverse have all gone up. So, the retention rate has significantly improved thanks to Weverse Live. And the second reason is that users are very satisfied with the quality of livestreaming services that we offer. They often give us feedback that compared to other major livestreaming services they are highly satisfied with the quality of livestreams that we provide. And the third reason is that Weverse Live has been integrated with live commerce, Weverse Commerce. When an artist or a label decides to do so, we can also turn on Weverse Commerce. That has really helped boost sales.

What might somebody sell with Weverse Commerce? A new album release?

Yes, our albums have been the most frequently sold items using the live commerce feature. Artists and labels prefer selling albums. That was the main item that was sold on live commerce. But, as I mentioned earlier, artists want to add the Weverse by Fans feature as part of the live commerce. So that’s something that we’re working on right now.

Since HYBE owns Weverse, it also owns a lot of data about its fans. How does HYBE leverage that data for either insights or marketing?

As you know, HYBE is a multi-label system. Underneath the multi-label system, each label is actively leveraging the fandom data coming from each community. However, what you need to understand is that within Weverse, there are many artists that are not HYBE artists, right? So, each label is working like a silo — they have access and they leverage the data only within their own community. So that’s what I want to clarify first.

As you know, Weverse is a platform and the neutrality of data and our service’s neutrality has been emphasized from the very beginning. From the early days of Weverse, that was something that we always have emphasized. Maybe because we have emphasized that importance, more than 90% of artists that have joined Weverse are not HYBE artists.

Could you give me insight into the size of the company, where your employees are, where you have offices? How could you describe the size of your footprint?

When we first started Weverse, we started with 50 to 60 people. But as I mentioned earlier, we went through a very compact, rapid growth within the last three or four years. So now we have about 370 people in Korea. So, in total around the world in three headquarters in Pangyo [South Korea], here where I am in Tokyo and Santa Monica, we have a total of about 450 employees. More than half of them are engineering people. I think it’s very hard to find any music company that has this many engineering people in-house. So, I think that was the biggest challenge we’ve been going through and also it has been very successful so far.

Do you expect to grow in 2024?

Yes. I’m very sure. Because, I mean, it has been [an] investment in advance because Weverse has massive traffic and a global scale. That requires a lot of work under the hood, way more than the surface features you can see from the web or app. There are a lot of things underneath that. So, it has been a very heavy lift, and that requires a lot of technological investment and investment.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

WeVerse, the social media platform owned by K-pop company HYBE, will add 13 artists from SM Entertainment on Sept. 12, the companies announced Tuesday (Sept. 5). That opens the platform to such artists as NCT 127, Red Velvet, Girls’ Generation, Super Junior, RIIZE and aespa. The partnership was announced in April.  “With this momentous occasion, […]

HYBE announced Monday (Sept. 17) that a dozen solo artists and music groups on the SM Entertainment roster will join its global fan community platform, Weverse, in September. Those artists, who have not yet been named, will move to Weverse from SM’s own fan community platform, Kwangya Club.

In addition to connecting with fans via services including Weverse Live, the 12 SM artists will also be featured on the e-commerce platform Weverse Shop, where fans can buy albums and official merchandise.

The Weverse deal derives from a platform partnership struck between HYBE, SM and Kakao Entertainment in March after HYBE fell short of its mission to purchase a controlling stake in SM. HYBE, home to K-pop superstars BTS, was blocked in its efforts by rival bidder Kakao, a South Korean tech company that owns Monsta X‘s label Starship Entertainment and Korean music streaming platform Melon. The battle ended when HYBE agreed to sell its entire SM stake to Kakao; days later, it sold 1.66 million SM shares to Kakao for 248.8 billion won ($191.8 million), amounting to 44% of its total shares in the company and increasing the stake of Kakao Corp. and its subsidiary, Kakao Entertainment, to nearly 40%. HYBE retains an 8.8% stake in SM.

Later in March, SM appointed Jang Cheol-hyuk as the company’s new CEO, succeeding outgoing CEO Lee Sung-soo, and named a new board as the company vowed to improve corporate governance and its production system, which had fallen behind rivals like HYBE in recent years and led to investor scrutiny.

Weverse claims approximately 65 million subscribers across 245 countries and regions globally.