Pop star Ariana Grande recently officially joined Weverse, a superfan platform owned by HYBE, the entertainment company that manages K-Pop group BTS. Weverse is an app that specializes in interaction between artists and fans. Artists on the app can write posts, do live broadcasts, and sell merchandise .
HYBE describes Weverse as a ' super app ' that also offers machine translation in 15 languages. When Jin, the oldest member of BTS, spoke to fans on Wednesday, June 12, 2024 after completing his 18-month military service, his first live broadcast was interrupted before resuming and garnering more than 2 million views in 10 minutes.
According to HYBE, the app, which was launched in 2019, had more than 10 million average monthly active users in the third quarter of 2023. Nine out of 10 Weverse users are international artists. Grande will join the app after signing a partnership with HYBE America, the entertainment company said Friday.
It did not provide further details. Her channel has not yet launched, and HYBE declined to confirm a launch date. HYBE America, which also manages Justin Bieber and The Kid LAROI, will continue to work with Grande's cosmetics brand, REM Beauty, the company added.
The new partnership comes after Billboard reported last year that Grande had parted ways with her manager, Scooter Braun, who had been with her since her debut in 2013. Braun is now CEO of HYBE America following a $1.05 billion merger deal in 2021 between HYBE and the music executive’s Ithaca Holdings.
Grande’s partnership announcement was met with laughter from K-Pop fans online. “Ariana unnie,” one fan said on X, referring to her by the Korean honorific for older sister. Japanese pop duo Yoasobi, who attended a state dinner at the White House with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in April, also launched their channel on Weverse earlier this month.
In a 2022 interview, Weverse President Joon Choi said that the platform's users are "superfans characterized by passionate engagement." "They buy merchandise here, watch videos there, communicate somewhere else... We don't have our customer database.
So, we started developing each service internally," Choi said, as quoted by VOI from Reuters . The app's growth comes amid HYBE's efforts to expand as a label including the acquisition of Exile Music, the music label of Spanish-language media company Exile Content, in its first major foray into the Latin music market.
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