[단독] Naver, Big Hit and stake exchange… The birth of a global K-pop platform

Naver invests a stake in Big Hit Entertainment, a company affiliated with BTS, through a’stock exchange’ method. It is an investment that highly evaluated the possibility of’Weverse’, a fan community platform of Big Hit, a global idol group BTS agency. Naver is running the K-pop community service’V Live’, which can be interpreted as the two companies have chosen cooperation over competition in the K-pop field.

According to the investment banking (IB) industry on the 22nd, it is known that Naver will seek synergy between VLive and Weverse by exchanging shares with Big Hit. The two companies chose to cooperate instead of competition because they saw that there are many fields to cooperate in fields such as online concerts because of the uniqueness of K-pop. In particular, the longer Corona 19 is, the more offline the stage will disappear, but the potential of online concerts will increase.

The K-pop platform is a’K-pop version’ that focuses on communication between fans. You can enjoy K-pop through various platforms, although it varies by platform, it is usually the artist’s small daily routine or sharing their own content with fans. Fans can also post or post comments to communicate with stars in real time. It serves as a communication channel for K-pop fans around the world.

Naver’s’VLive’, which started its service in 2015, exceeded 100 million cumulative downloads last year, and currently operates 1603 star channels. As of the 19th, a total of 141 membership products were opened for stars to directly pack viewing benefits such as concerts and entertainment with big data. In particular, SM and’Beyond Live’ started an online concert that applied augmented reality (AR) technology from April of last year.

Big Hit Weverse is also drawing a fast rising curve with’Ami’ (BTS fandom) that has spread around the world. By the end of last year, Weverse recorded 17 million cumulative downloads and 1920 million subscribers, and total postings reached 117 million. While operating a membership, Weverse is also selling performance tickets and goods.

While increasing its influence as a K-pop platform, cooperation with world-class music companies will also be predicted. Artists belonging to these music companies are expected to plan online concerts to overcome the Corona 19 recession using online concerts of domestic companies.

An official in the IT industry said, “Overseas entertainment companies are showing great interest because of the increased status of the K-pop industry and the potential of domestic singers’ online concerts.” It seems to have started with the purpose of being able to solidarity.”

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