Courtesy of HYBEFollowing their full-group reunion in June 2025, BTS saw a surge of over 300% in new community followers compared to the previous month and became HYBE's first fan community to surpass 30m followers
HYBE-owned superfan service Weverse hit 12 million monthly active users (MAUs) in 2025 – a new high-water mark for a platform that has become one of the most closely watched experiments in direct-to-fan monetization in the global music business.
The milestone was published in Weverse’s new 2025 Fandom Trend Report. According to HYBE, the “annual report offers insights into the different stages of fan engagement and demonstrates how Weverse converts superfan-artist connections into long-term growth drivers on a global scale”.
The headline figure of 12 million MAUs was driven in large part by BTS’s full-group reunion in June 2025, which sparked a 300%-plus surge in new community followers month over month. BTS members first revealed plans for a new album and world tour during a live stream on Weverse last summer, following the completion of all seven members’ mandatory military service in South Korea.
BTS also became the first community to surpass 30 million followers on the platform.
There are now 178 artists active on the platform, including HYBE stars such as BTS and KATSEYE, YG Entertainment‘s BLACKPINK, and US or Europe-based artists such as Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa. HYBE said last April that 90% of the artists on the platform are signed to labels other than HYBE.
The 12 million MAU figure represents continued growth from the 11.6 million Weverse reported in Q3 2025, which itself represented 20% YoY growth (see below).
Weverse’s growth comes against a backdrop of intense industry focus on superfan monetization – a sector that Goldman Sachs has estimated could generate an additional $4.3 billion in annual revenue for the recorded music industry.
Weverse’s latest annual data, then, provides a useful benchmark for what a scaled superfan platform looks like in practice. Here are three trends that stood out from the new report:
1. The engagement picture
According to HYBE’s new report, fans spent an average of 263minutes per month on Weverse in 2025, uploading 90 million posts and 213 million comments across communities featuring 178 artists based worldwide.
Artists, for their part, hosted 6,558 Weverse LIVE sessions over the course of the year, amassing more than 1 billion views in total.
The raw MAU number alone doesn’t tell the full story; with users averaging over four hours a month on the platform and generating 303 million combined posts and comments, Weverse’s value lies less in the size of its audience than in the intensity of what that audience does when it shows up.
The commerce numbers were also notable.
Weverse Shop sold 25.2 million products last year, while digital product purchases more than doubled year-over-year – a signal that HYBE’s push into virtual goods and digital merchandise is gaining traction.
2. Latin America: Weverse’s breakout market
Perhaps the most eye-catching regional data point: Latin America was Weverse’s fastest-growing market in 2025, with a 22% YoY increase in users and a 715% YoY surge in digital merchandise sales.
That growth did not happen in a vacuum. It coincided with a period of aggressive investment by HYBE in the region – a push that has accelerated significantly over the past two years.
HYBE first entered the Latin music market in late 2023 through its acquisition of Exile Music, an affiliate label of Spanish-language entertainment studio Exile Content, which led to the establishment of HYBE Latin America as a Mexico-based division.
In early 2025, HYBE Latin America launched a new label called DOCEMIL Music and signed Mexican music veteran Emmanuel “Meme” del Real — known for his work with multiple Latin Grammy Award-winning rock band Café Tacvba — as its first artist.
Then, in September, HYBE Latin America launched S1ENTO Records, a regional Mexican music-focused label built off the back of Pase a la Fama, a reality competition series developed in partnership with Telemundo. The label launched with three signings from the show.
Meanwhile, HYBE’s Latin American division also debuted new groups MUSZA and SANTOS BRAVOS from local audition programs in Q3 2025. Santos Bravos racked up over 100 million views on social media and 100,000 Weverse subscribers after its debut, and its debut concert in Mexico City sold out in two hours.
HYBE CEO Jason Jaesang Lee flagged as far back as late 2024 that HYBE LatAm was “preparing to debut a localized band, which can mark a starting point of the fandom business in Latin America, where consumption of Latin genre music can be developed into a more complex culture”.
The 715% surge in digital merch sales on Weverse across the region suggests that “fandom business” is already taking root.
A caveat worth noting: BTS’s return remains Weverse’s single most powerful growth lever — the 300% follower surge last summer made that clear — and how much of the platform’s engagement picture is attributable to one act versus its broader roster of 178 artists is a question the headline numbers don’t fully answer.
Latin America isn’t the only global growth frontier for Weverse. As MBWreported last November, HYBE has been making significant inroads into China through strategic partnerships with two of the market’s digital giants: Tencent Music Entertainment and Alibaba.
Most recently, Weverse reported that its Digital Membership sign-ups were particularly strong in China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and the United States.
Weverse President Joon Choitold MBW in April 2025 that “one of the most interesting parts about Weverse is that 90% of our traffic comes from regions outside of Korea, which means that most of our users are global superfans”.
3. THE CONVERSION QUESTION
A central question for the superfan economy: can platforms turn casual fans into paying superfans, or are they just monetizing people who were already all-in?
Weverse’s 2025 Fandom Trend Report takes a crack at answering that. HYBE tracked how 30 million users engaged with 32 platform features across 2024 and 2025, mapping out four stages of fandom: from occasional browsers to the most dedicated fans who buy collectibles, attend events, and drive fan culture online and offline.
The headline finding: around 15% of users became more active over time after using features like Weverse DM and Weverse LIVE.
And among those now classified as Superfans, 20% started out as more casual users before working their way up.
Put simply, Weverse suggests it isn’t just serving superfans — it’s making them.
HYBE has an obvious incentive to frame the data favorably. But as the rest of the industry races to build its own superfan tools, the conversion question, not just how many superfans you have, but how many you can create, may end up being the one that matters most.
“In 2025, Weverse solidified its position as the leading global superfan hub by harnessing fan participation and artist-driven momentum.”
Joon Choi, Weverse
Commenting on the findings of the report, Joon Choi, President of Weverse Company, said: “In 2025, Weverse solidified its position as the leading global superfan hub by harnessing fan participation and artist-driven momentum.
“Led by a deeper understanding of diverse engagement dynamics, we are committed to building a seamless ecosystem that empowers both fans and artists at every stage of their journey.”
Weverse’s report also pointed to signs of growth beyond BTS:
BLACKPINK became the first girl group to exceed 10 million community followers — together with BTS, the two acts added 6.5 million followers in 2025.
KATSEYE surpassed 2.3 million community followers, with average Weverse LIVE views up 490% YoY
11 rookie acts debuted in 2025 and attracted over 4.4 million community followers.
Communities with 3m+ followers nearly doubled; those exceeding 2m tripled
