V Live is done at the end of 2022, leaving some content likely gone forever & making fandom archiving more important than ever

Nov 03, 2022 - 12:01

V Live is done at the end of 2022, leaving some content likely gone forever & making fandom archiving more important than ever

A few days ago V Live announced it would be ending services at the end of the year, which doesn’t come as a surprise since shuttering the service was always the intent when the HYBE/Naver app merger was announced. The point was to “integrate” things with Weverse (essentially eliminating competition), and those artists already on the app before V Live comes to an end will have their content (paid and not) transferred over.

As many have already pointed out, however, those not on Weverse are seemingly going to be left high and dry with all the content (including paid stuff) disappearing into the ether. HYBE have essentially replied to these concerns by telling Mashable that the companies have been aware of this for a while so too bad.

In a comment to Mashable, a Weverse representative assured that artists and their companies have been given ample time to download their archives for future use elsewhere. “We have consistently informed channel operators … with full information on content backup and download for about a year,” since November 2021, they said. “We are in the process of executing content migration to Weverse,” they added, “and [are] planning to complete the process by Dec. 28, 2022. … Following the integration, non-Weverse artists’ contents will no longer be accessible to the public.” That means the content belonging to non-Weverse artists — which, in some cases, is hundreds of hours of streams — may disappear as early as Dec. 28 of this year before the app itself vanishes after the 31st.

That’s all true, but relying on companies to competently archive content, much less make it available to fans, isn’t a great bet. Furthermore, and most worryingly, the content of disbanded groups and/or those from defunct companies might not have any available options no matter how much notice was given.

Of course, there are always solutions, and I’m aware for many groups with any hint of popularity there are dedicated fans out there downloading god knows how many gigabytes of streams and hosting them elsewhere for fellow fans. Like when the catalogue of Star Empire Entertainment seemingly vanished off Spotify months ago, fans were there with a compiled archive to help out others.