The hugely influential live-streaming platform that ushered Korean pop music to global prominence has gone dark. A period of growth in the Korean music industry was documented in a library of tens of thousands of live streams on the mobile app and desktop site. The merger of Weverse and V Live resulted in the closing of V Live and its video database.
V Live is a streaming platform for the country's music artists and actors. It was one of the pioneers in the live-streaming industry. In 2015, there were a lot of startup that were competing with twitch. The live-streaming feature on Facebook was launched that year.
V Live offered a more controlled environment than any of its competitors. More than 1200 artists produced content on the app when it was closed. During the height of the COVID-19 epidemic, V Live hosted live-streamed concerts, as well as original artist content.
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The industry was accessible to an international audience in real time thanks to V Live. Some well-known groups drew hundreds of thousands or millions of live views per stream on the app. They were often subtitled in multiple languages to make them accessible to fans outside of South Korea and saved to V Live for on-demand viewing. Users were able to submit translations through the platform's own service, V Fansubs. Some streams were made available in more than a dozen languages after the subtitles were approved by the service.
The reach of V Live was extended by only one group. The band's authenticity was supported by the looseness and spontaneity of their lives, which they used to communicate with their fans. More than 166 billion likes, 12 billion views, and 2 billion comments were obtained by the V Live channel at the time it was closed. As their fame grew abroad, they would forgo star- studded awards show after parties to go back to their hotel and stream on V Live for millions.
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V Live has a focus on artist-fan communication. Users were assigned ranks within an artist's fandom that could be boosted by watching videos, sharing content, and engaging with livestreams. Fans could earn Chemi-beat cred by commenting on a stream or quickly tapping an icon in the corner. Fans sometimes worked together to surpass 1 million hearts, which would prompt an on-screen celebratory message for both the viewers and the artist. While on camera, idols would be seen "hearting" their own streams.
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Several paid features were offered by V Live. Premium content could be accessed with the purchase of a digital currency called "V Coins". V Coins could be used to buy live chat stickers and a "V Lightstick" that looked like the official lightstick of the artist. The V Lighstick would increase a user's Chemi-beat and their support for the artist.
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The unpredictable nature of live-streaming gave Korea's pop idols a challenge. Many of the livestreams were intimate and chaotic missives from artists' personal lives. They broadcasted from their homes, in cars on the way to appearances, and in hotels. They went live while drunk. They made music and bickered. In one notable livestream, Jungkook worked his way through a bottle of wine, growing tipsy as he assured the audience, "I'm not drunk, I'm just buffering."
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Some idols took advantage of V Live to discuss topics they wouldn't be allowed to discuss in official interviews. Until a few weeks ago, there was a weekly livestream on the platform that he called "Chan's Room," in which he spoke openly about mental health, relationships, and professional pressure. He addressed taboo subjects like menstruation and fanwars by listening and reacting to peers' music. He now hosts his weekly streams on the video sharing website.
The first mention of V Live's integration with Weverse was in January of 2020. Weverse is owned by the entertainment conglomerate. Ahead of V Live's closing, Tomorrow X Together, Seventeen, and Enhypen have been streaming exclusively on Weverse. Weverse gave artists who weren't part of the community enough time to download their archives for future use. Artists could join Weverse and have their content automatically uploaded to the app. It's likely that this option wouldn't work for many of the major artists who already had standing contracts with other apps.
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Fans who credit the platform for sparking their love of Korean pop music are most upset by the loss of the library. Many of their memories did when the app went away. Before the app's closing, some fans took it upon themselves to save their favorite artist's V Live content by recording it and uploading it to other sites. The group's V Live recordings have been neatly organized by the group member and year. A.C.E.'s V Live streams have been re- uploaded to YouTube by fans of the group. SM Entertainment groups have been uploaded by another channel. The fan-made archives can be found in the thread on the internet.
V Live can be found on Weverse, as well as smaller fan-artist communication apps and larger platforms. Artists have begun to use those channels as a replacement for V Live. The app's archive and influence can't be duplicated. The V Live library documented six years of sonic, stylistic, and personal development for hundreds of artists at a crucial time for K-pop, which has only existed in its current form for 30 years. The joy that the app brought to millions was lost when it was closed.
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