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Fan community apps emerge as new cash cow for entertainment agencies
By Park Ji-won
When one BTS fan, who asked to be identified only by her surname Lee, wakes up in the morning, the first thing she does is open Weverse, the mobile application for BTS' global fan community, to check for updates. In the app, which includes an online store and a combination of features offered on other apps, such as YouTube and Twitter, she can take part in all kinds of fan activities, even send adoring messages to the boy band.
Using the app has become essential for some BTS fans as it is the only way to get exclusive information about the superstars. Fans can see announcements from members of the group, access Weverse-only videos, and buy merchandise. The singers also occasionally interact with fans using their personal accounts on the app. For those who want to join the ARMY ― the official name of BTS' fan club ― they need to do so through Weverse.
"The app is a necessity for BTS fans who want to know about the stars. Every day I spend more than one hour on the app. There was a BTS fan community on Daum in the past, but most fans moved to Weverse when it was introduced," Kim Sun-young, an ARMY member and a Korean language lecturer at Yonsei University told The Korea Times over the phone Tuesday.
"You cannot expect to get a message from BTS on general social media. But if you are lucky, you can get one on the app. We can see posts from overseas ARMY members with the help of translation services. Some found it difficult to use the app at the beginning, as it is hard for fans to talk to each other as they had in the past, but as the artists started to write things only on the new platform, fans had to move."
Launched in June 2019 by Big Hit Entertainment, BTS' agency, the platform has been expanding its business with unprecedented speed, continuing to attract stars and fans across the globe. So far, the fan communities of 13 stars such as SEVENTEEN, GFriend, Sunmi, and CL are operated on the same platform. Even Gracie Abrams, a U.S. singer-songwriter and New Hope Club, a U.K. band, were added to the artist list recently. As of September, the number of Weverse users exceeded 150 million, according to the company.
It appears that the expansion of the fan community platform is in line with Big Hit's move to become a platform company. More importantly, it is a lucrative business. Sales through Weverse reached 31 billion won ($28.3 million) in 2019, but soared to 112.7 billion won in just the first half of 2020, or 38.3 percent of Big Hit's total sales. The proportion was only 9.7 percent last year.
A "fandom economy" has been growing in recent years. Park Yong-hee, an analyst at IBK Securities, said the size of Big Hit's fandom is worth 7.9 trillion won. A recent study by Southeast Asia's e-commerce group iPrice also showed that BTS fans spend an average of $1,422 a year on merchandise while fans of TWICE and BLACKPINK spend an average of $824 and $665, respectively. The data was gathered from hundreds of merchants in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong and excludes any music festivals, joint tours, or performances at award events.
In addition to Big Hit, other entertainment companies and media companies are jumping into the growing fan platform business.
SM Entertainment has joined hands with Naver, the leading online platform and search engine, to combine its fan community app called Lysn, with Fanship, the latter's fan community service. Naver decided to invest 100 billion won in the entertainment company to create synergy in coming up with original digital content for fans of its acts.
NCSOFT, an online game developer, is also set to release a new fan community service called UNIVERSE early next year. The platform, which will cover the communities of 11 K-pop groups and solo artists such as MONSTA X, Kang Daniel and (G)I-DLE, enables fans to experience simulated telephone conversations with the performers based on AI-powered speech synthesis technology created in collaboration with the artists. Fans can change the costumes of stars' avatars and make their own music videos in the app as if they're playing a game.
Critics say that the popularity of the fan communities is attributable to the unique nature of the K-pop industry, with its fandom that could be described as being either devoted or obsessive.
"Music markets abroad can sell content or merchandise by releasing a song. For example, Taylor Swift or Billie Eilish would rarely chat with fans through apps. But in the K-pop industry, it's thought that it is very important for artists to have close communication and build strong relations with fans through social media. The entertainment companies' move to launch their own platforms and release original content through the media is seen as their efforts to take a friendly approach to fans," Jung Min-jae, a pop music critic, told The Korea Times, Tuesday.
"The platform is not relevant to the music itself. Their main aim is to raise additional revenue through celebrity marketing."
