Pop star Ariana Grande recently officially joined Weverse, a superfan platform owned by HYBE, an entertainment company that manages K-Pop group BTS.
Weverse is an application that specializes in interaction between artists and fans. Artists in this application can write posts, make live broadcasts, and sell merchandise. HYBE describes Weverse as a'super app' which also offers machine translation in 15 languages.
When Jin, the oldest member of BTS, spoke to fans on Wednesday, June 12 after completing his military duties for 18 months, his first live broadcast had experienced disruption before continuing and getting more than 2 million spectators in 10 minutes.
According to HYBE, the app, which was released in 2019, has more than 10 million monthly active users on average in the third quarter of 2023. Nine of the 10 Weverse users are international artists.
Grande will join the app after signing a partnership with HYBE America, according to the entertainment company on Friday. They gave no further details. The channel has not been launched, and HYBE declined to confirm its opening date.
HYBE America, which also manages Justin Bieber and The Kid LAROI, will continue to work closely with Grande's cosmetic brand, REM Beauty, the company added.
The new partnership comes after Billboard reported last year that Grande has separated from its manager, Scooter Braun, who has been with him since his debut in 2013. Braun has now become CEO of HYBE America after a $1.05 billion merger deal in 2021 between HYBE and Ithaca Holdings owned by the music executive.
Grande's partnership announcement was greeted with laughter by online K-Pop fans. "Ariana unnie," said a fan on X, referring to him the designation of Korean honor for older sisters.
Japanese pop duo Badminton, who attended a state dinner at the White House with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in April, also opened their channel at Weverse earlier this month.
SEE ALSO:
HYBE targets
In an interview in 2022, President of Weverse, Joon Choi, said that users of this platform are "superfans characterized by passionate engagement."
"They buy merchandise here, watch videos there, communicate elsewhere... We don't have our customer database. So, we started developing every service internally," said Choi, quoted by VOI from Reuters.
The growth in this application comes amid HYBE's efforts to expand as a label including the acquisition of Exile Music, a music label from Spanish-language media company Exile Content, in their first major effort to the Latin music market.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
