“This year’s lineup felt like a big step forward to me,” HYBE Chairman Bang Si-hyuk said. “Weverse artists who aren’t HYBE singers played a huge part, and we leveraged the outdoor stage to showcase their special performances.” Weverse Con Festival underwent a fundamental evolution this year by experimenting with new ideas. By combining elements from the 2021 NEW YEAR’S EVE and 2022 Weverse Con: New Era concerts with HYBE artists into a two-day festival, the annual event has grown in both size and significance. One day of indoor performances evolved into a morning-to-night, two-day music festival made up of Weverse Con and Weverse Park, with even more acts featuring even more artists. HYBE artists including BAEKHO, BOYNEXTDOOR, BUMZU, Dvwn, ENHYPEN, fromis_9, HWANG MIN HYUN, Lee Hyun, LE SSERAFIM, MOONCHILD, NewJeans, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, ZICO and &TEAM, were joined by Korean and international artists with a presence on the fandom platform Weverse, such as Kim Junsu, BTOB, LIGHTSUM, HYOLYN and Jeremy Zucker. Just as Weverse has brought together a wide range of  artists in one online space, Weverse Con Festival opened up the possibility to experience music from many different artists all in a physical space. Kim Junsu is the one who welcomed Uhm Junghwa to the Tribute Stage. Weverse Festival was Kim’s first time participating in an event with multiple artists in 14 years. Boy groups TOMORROW X TOGETHER and ENHYPEN dedicated to Uhm reinterpretations of some of her hits, like “Invitation” and “Come 2 Me.” “I think there needs to be respect and reverence for pop music history,” Chairman Bang explained. “We need a space where we can commemorate and pay tribute to it. Weverse Festival should aspire to keep that historical significance alive.”

True to that word, Weverse Con Festival gave K-pop artists and their fans an experience that is hard to come by in the established K-pop scene. For example, ENHYPEN member JAY broke out into an electric guitar solo in the midst of his group’s performance of  “Attention, Please!” at Weverse Park. This was possible because every Weverse Park performance was staged with a live band,  to which the Weverse artists tailored their performances. “We wanted the performances at Weverse Park to put audiences in the festival mood, so we asked the artists to put on a show where festival goers could dance, jump around and vibe with them,” said Eum Hye Jeong, a lead professional with the Concert Direction 2 Studio under HYBE’s concert production team that directed the festival. Groups who performed both days at Weverse Con and Weverse Park, like ENHYPEN, TOMORROW X TOGETHER and &TEAM, gave their usual exciting performances for Weverse Con while putting on shows that took advantage of the band-backed stage to accommodate the outdoor festival at Weverse Park. LE SSERAFIM member HUH YUNJIN, meanwhile, took to the Weverse Park stage without her fellow group members to sing and play guitar with a backing band. The rest of the LE SSERAFIM members were on the grass enjoying her performance with everyone else—an unusual sight for a K-pop concert. “It was a huge undertaking to figure out how to make this festival different from others,” said Baek In Woo, a representative with the Concert Direction 2 Studio. “Our approach was to bring out new, unexpected sides of the artist by leveraging the two different venues. Even with the same artist performing, their aura and presence had to appear different between outdoors and indoors.” Weverse Con Festival blurred the boundary between K-pop concerts and outdoor festivals, and between K-pop and non-K-pop artists, expanding the reach of them all.

One of the key quirks of the festival was that “we didn’t make pre-recorded videos of the artists to play between songs,” Baek explained. Weverse Con Festival assigned a musical theme to each venue: “the urban” and “the paradise.”  In the case of the latter, videos invoking the concept of paradise were played between songs rather than introductory videos of artists, to tie the performances together under one, coherent theme, thus amplifying the ambience of a true festival. Weverse Park also featured a dance studio where festival goers could learn their favorite artist’s dance moves to keep themselves entertained between performances, and a hype stage hosted by TV personality Jaejae. TOMORROW X TOGETHER member YEONJUN even made a well-received surprise appearance at the dance studio. “We wanted to make sure there were always things to keep people engaged  between performances so that it doesn’t feel like they were just waiting around,” said Eum. The idea was to imbue a traditional K-pop concert with elements of outdoor festivals for the Weverse Con, while injecting elements that would be enjoyed by K-pop fans into a full-fledged festival for the Weverse Park. The carefully orchestrated attempt to connect K-pop—and by extension, Weverse—with everything that exists outside it through an expansive festival gave audiences a brand new concert experience. The novel experience extended to the rest of the festival besides the concerts, thanks to the underlying technology. For example, festival goers could register with the Weverse Queues system through a QR code and receive a notification when it was their turn at a booth. Another service was Weverse by Fans, where fans could choose a photo of their favorite artist and get a custom pin or photo card on the spot. These services satisfy the needs of K-pop fans, and when combined with technology, create a novel festival experience.

“The Weverse platform and its technologies act as an invisible hand that helps people fully experience the content and IP without deterrence,” Joon Choi, the president of Weverse, explained. “We hope to make the process and experience of getting tickets, checking ID and everything else feel completely frictionless and natural.” It’s the same reason Baek said that “being able to experience many different events without having to wait in long lines” was among the experiences they had hoped for the festival attendees. Now, there’s an opportunity to take cumbersome aspects of concert-viewing and festivals that have been taken for granted, and make them much more pleasant. “There are services that feel like second nature to us now, but just a few years earlier, they were absent and everyone had to deal with the hassle,” Bang explained, “we’re eliminating those hassles that  people continue to put up with.” These new experiences culminate to give festival goers another reason to check out festivals with newer formats like Weverse Con Festival. It’s also the rationale behind other goals Choi has for the event. “I believe this year’s festival succeeded in showing the audience the breadth of  what is possible,” he said. “I feel we did well on the trial run and saw a lot of potential. Next, we want to make sure people really enjoy themselves at the venue and to see it as an experience on a level of its own—that’s the ultimate goal.” In other words, an experience that, once you get a taste of it, you can never go back. Or in one word: innovation. 

“This leaves little doubt that there’s room for a festival centered entirely around K-pop,” HYBE COO Kim Taeho said. “We worried about ticket sales because we thought, as a fan, would you pay to see a show where your favorite artist appears for a lot less than if they were to have their own concert? But as the festival carried on, we realized it was an unfounded doubt that came from a lack of experience.” Kim said that Weverse Con Festival attendees were highly satisfied with the experience and expressed a desire to return. Notably, foreign festival goers made up 57% of the audience on the second day of the festival. In fact, the audience didn’t skew toward any particular gender, age group, race or nationality. “It was a very global audience, with a diverse age range. It was fantastic seeing such a wide spectrum of people—from the passionate audience members standing on the lawn, to those seated on mats with food in hand, to the people resting in the shade to chat and soak in the atmosphere.” As for President Choi, he was fascinated by the possibilities that Weverse Con Festival had opened up. “I thought it would be great if people could experience what others enjoy and broaden their own preferences at Weverse Con Festival,” he explained. The more these individual preferences come together, the more diverse and colorful that community becomes. Just seeing how many musical genres we can embrace within the music world is a feat worth pursuing.”

If Weverse Con Festival has any implications for the pop music market, it’s that it’s showing the direction the music of today should collectively take moving forward. The convergence of classics and trending artists highlights the importance of music, while the coming together of K-pop and Korean artists at large with artists from other countries and other genres, opens doors to new experiences. All the while, the online and offline worlds are bridged thanks to technology that allows audiences to witness firsthand its benefits for the music industry. HYBE Chairman Bang described Weverse Con Festival’s vision most succinctly: “We want to become a platform where people can showcase the state-of-the-art technologies and artistic approaches rooted in the popular arts of the era.”