Talent is on the metaverse, and being born in it

Isegye Idol, a six-member virtual girl group that made its debut last December, hit No. 1 on a local music chart and surpassed 5.8 million views of their official YouTube music video. [YOUTUBE CAPTURE]

Isegye Idol, a virtual girl group, has gone where no other virtual act has gone before: to the top of the music charts.

Korea’s most notable cyber singers in the past, like Adam and Lusia in the 1990s, can barely be called one-hit wonders: they vanished soon after they were created.

The success of the six-member Isegye Idol shows that cyber-celebrity's time has come -- and the metaverse may be transforming into the entertainment world's most promising arena.

Isegye Idol was formed last August by a Korean online personality calling himself Woowakgood, who livestreams himself playing games on YouTube and Twitch.
It made its debut in December 2021 with the single "Rewind," which shot to No. 1 on local music charts.

The song hit No. 1 on Bugs Music on the day of its release and ranked highest on the Gaon Chart for the number of downloads.
It ranked 36 on the Melon Top 100 chart and surpassed 5.8 million views as of the end of April.

Woowakgood’s project to create a virtual idol group started in June 2021 and he made a public spectacle of it, starting with auditions for people to sing its songs through an online virtual world platform called VRChat.

Woowakgood posted the auditions on his YouTube and Twitch channels, and fans were even allowed to vote for the final members, like on "American Idol" or Mnet's hit show, "Produce 101."

Fans were also invited to participate in other parts of the idol-making process such as songwriting and song arrangements, the kind of involvement they could only feverishly dream about with flesh-and-blood acts created by entertainment agencies.

In fact, as suggested by the auditions, the members of Isegye Idol are not completely virtual. There's human talent hidden behind those metaverse pixels: their voices and personalities both come from real performers.

The success of Isegye Idol is pushing entertainment companies like SM, JYP, YG and HYBE into investing in the metaverse world.

Last month, HYBE wrote shareholders to say it is merging Weverse, its K-pop fan community platform, with Naver V Live, Naver’s live streaming service application, to launch Weverse 2.0 by the end of the year.

Fan community platforms are a type of metaverse platform, and HYBE makes money through its online Weverse shop in the platform that sells artists' merchandise.

SM and JYP are upgrading DearU bubble, a chatroom service connecting artists and fans, run by their subsidiary DearU.

SM Entertainment owns the largest stake of DearU, 33.66 percent, and JYP owns 19.5 percent.
JYP, HYBE and YG have also invested in Naver Z’s metaverse platform Zepeto.

According to HYBE, its revenues from intellectual property, licensing, and the platform business, which do not involve artists’ direct involvement, accounted for 58.3 percent of total sales in 2021. Revenues from song copyrights, performances and commercials made up the rest.

Weverse Company generated 258.7 billion won ($205.6 million) in revenues last year, almost half that of HYBE. Revenues soared 20-fold compared to 2018's 14.4 billion won.

SM’s metaverse platform DearU bubble reported revenues of 40 billion won last year, up 206 percent on year.

The global metaverse market will grow at an annual rate of 10 percent to reach 376 trillion won in 2024, according to Mirae Asset Securities.

“For entertainment companies to do business on metaverse platforms, artist lineups and the ability to bring more fans are important,” said Song Beom-yong, a researcher at Mirae Asset Securities. “The industry is capable of growing further by holding hybrid concerts and selling virtual goods.”

BY BAE JUNG-WON, CHO JUNG-WOO [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]