As the COVID-19 virus is spreading, many industries are suffering greatly. It has already been over two years since the pandemic began. The K-POP industry is no exception. Until 2020, world tour concerts accounted for a large percentage of entertainment agencies’ sales. Meeting between stars and fans was considered the essence of this ‘idol’ industry. As governments around the world, including Korea, implemented strong social distancing restrictions, it has become difficult to hold these kinds of events. But Korean entertainment agencies got over these difficulties successfully. The key to their success is digital transformation.
Now most K-POP stars hold online fan meeting when they release a new album. The online fan meeting is an entirely new form of K-POP event. Using Google Meet or Kakao Video Call, the star and fan have a video call for about two minutes. After the event, the album which the star has signed and written the fan’s name and P.S. is delivered to each fan’s home.
Likewise, concerts are being held online, too. Instead of the chance to meet celebrities in person, K-POP fans have the chance to watch their favorite star’s performances with online devices at home. The price for the tickets vary, but some are even free! Dream Maker Entertainment provides a special online concert platform to K-POP agencies which is called Beyond Live. Once the ticket is purchased, fans can enjoy the concert at a certain time and watch the replay anytime. On-site concerts have time and space constraints, but online concerts don’t. That is to say, more people can get an opportunity to enjoy the show and it leads to the growth of the star’s popularity.
DearU Bubble is an app that provides star-fan messaging. SM Entertainment, the most popular Korean entertainment agency, established their subsidiary in 2017 and started the Bubble service in 2020. Not only stars of SM Entertainment but also other famous K-POP stars have joined the service, so people can enjoy communicating with various stars. The stars send text messages, exclusive photos, and videos through Bubble. If got messages, the subscribers can reply to the star. Although it’s not one-to-one communication actually, the app’s UI makes them feel like they’re chatting in private. The price of the service that you can communicate with one celebrity is \4,500 a month. Even though the price is not that cheap, 90% of subscribers keep using Bubble. Also, the number of people using Bubble is about 1.2 million without any special marketing or promotion. It means this service is quite attractive to K-POP fans.
HYBE, an entertainment agency to which BTS belongs, also made a similar service called Weverse. It offers star-fan communication service, exclusive photos/videos, and special MD products. In Korea, these kinds of app services are called fan-platform services. Now it is an undeniable truth that you should use these fan-platform services if you are a great fan of K-POP.
People all around the world are into Metaverse now, and the K-POP agencies are trying to combine the star’s IP (intellectual property) and Metaverse. As many people already know, Metaverse is a combination word of ‘meta’, which means imaginary and abstract, and ‘verse’, which means ‘universe’. ‘BLACKPINK’, YG Entertainment’s famous girl group, have their own Metaverse world with ZEPETO, the Metaverse platform. They hold a variety of fan events in their ZEPETO world. Meanwhile, ‘aespa’, SM Entertainment’s girl group, have their unique background narration related to Metaverse. It is as follows. They have four human members and four AI members called ‘ae-aespa’. The ae-aespa members originally live in a virtual world called FLAT, but aespa members and they meet together to fight against the villain. Therefore, aespa’s songs have unique lyrics implying this epic story.
NFT, non-fungible token, is used to prove the content’s worth and ownership. Korean big entertainment agencies such as SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, YG Plus, and HYBE are continuing to work under the table to combine their celebrities’ IP and NFT. If K-POP agencies use NFT to maximize their celebrities’ IP, they might have tons of ways to create a profit. In Indonesia, a photo card of BTS Jungkook was traded at over $2500. This NFT fever is creating a synergy effect with the Metaverse platform, providing K-POP fans groundbreaking experiences to have chances to own their star’s IP.
K-POP agencies and celebrities are quickly adapting to the COVID Era by creating new business models; online fan meeting, online concert, fan-platform app service, and the convergence of Metaverse and NFT. As of today in Korea, the 4th Industrial Revolution is becoming a real sensation and the K-POP industry is also making big changes by transforming their business into a digital-related thing. People not into K-POP are also focusing on this new trend as it broadens the K-POP industry’s limits and merges into other industries. This trend seems to be accelerated as technology advances.
Han Saem Lee
K-UNIV Reporter
