Being a fan used to cost an album and a ticket. Now it also costs a subscription, and usually several. Fans pay to enter the group's community, to read the group's posts without ads, to message a member, to buy the lightstick, to apply for the pre-sale. Each of these is a separate app or a separate button, and each has a price that changes from time to time.
We, the haeyo teachers, drew a map of the main ones. It is a map and not a shopping list, because we found that prices move faster than articles about them. Wherever we could not confirm a current price, we say so, and we give no number rather than an old one.
Weverse: the platform, the shop and the membership
Weverse is a fan platform run by the HYBE group. It does three things at once: it hosts an artist's community page, it runs a shop for albums and goods, and it sells a paid membership. Its reach is wide. A Korea Herald report in October 2024 said it had around 10 million monthly users and 152 teams on the platform, of which 137 did not belong to HYBE.
The membership is where the money question sits. The same report said that membership for one artist's community cost 30,000 won a year, about 24 US dollars, and that the global membership for one very large fandom was listed in the Weverse shop at 22 US dollars, taxes extra, for 365 days, with prices differing by region. A plan reported in late 2024 for a 'digital membership' at 2,700 to 5,400 won a month would remove advertising and add offline viewing and higher picture quality. The report added that, according to unnamed sources, labels would receive 40 to 70 percent of the revenue and Weverse 30 to 60 percent, and that a lawmaker called for a Fair Trade Commission inquiry. We could not confirm whether that plan went ahead in that form, so we report it as a proposal.
The most expensive item is the direct-message feature, called DM. According to a Weverse official-account notice, a web subscription costs 15 jelly a month, and from 20 January 2026 subscriptions bought through app stores went up from 15 to 17 jelly. The price in won depends on the jelly exchange rate, so we cannot give it. An overseas report quoted before the rise put a DM at about 4 to 5 US dollars per member per month. That figure is unverified.
Bubble, Fromm and Berriz: one subscription per artist
These are paid-message apps where each artist has their own subscription. The model is simple: a fan pays monthly to receive messages from a member, and can usually send a reply that the member may or may not see. Bubble is run by a company called Dear U. Fromm and Berriz we could not price.
The cost of this model comes from how it scales. A one-member subscription is a few dollars, which seems small; a ten-member group makes the same fan's bill ten times larger if she wants every member. Newspim reported in November 2025 that a fan in her twenties spent about 50,000 won a month on paid messages across several platforms alone, that a ten-member group's subscriptions add up to tens of thousands of won, and that a fan of several groups can spend hundreds of thousands of won a month.
Official fan clubs and the pre-sale
An official fan club is not the same as a platform, although many fan clubs now live on one. Joining usually costs a yearly fee, as the 30,000-won example above shows, and it gives you things the platform's free tier does not. The big one is the 선예매 (seonyemae), the pre-sale: a window in which members can book concert tickets before the general public.
That window has been getting more complicated. In June 2026, several groups used a three-step process: a Korean fan-club pre-sale first, a global fan-club pre-sale second and general sale last. For a fan living outside Korea, the first step is not open to her, which is why a membership that looks cheap may not buy the seat you wanted. Booking itself also needs ID verification. Interpark, a main ticketing site, asks foreigners to verify with a foreign passport, once per account.
Fan-sign events through Weverse add another condition. In one example notice, you buy the album in the shop, apply with the same ID, and are entered once for each copy bought. Details such as a name, a birth date, a KakaoTalk ID and a Korean phone number are required, and the notice says information cannot be edited after you apply and that albums are not refunded if you lose the draw. Many such notices need a Korean phone number and KakaoTalk, which makes them hard for foreign fans. They differ from notice to notice, so read each one.
One fan, one month
Here is a monthly table for a fan of a large group, using only prices we could source. It is an illustration and not a typical bill, because spending varies enormously. Several lines are blank on purpose.
| Item | Amount per month | Source and caveat |
|---|---|---|
| Weverse membership, one artist | 2,500 won (30,000 a year, divided by 12) | Korea Herald, Oct 2024. Prices differ by region and community. |
| Paid messages, several apps | About 50,000 won | One fan's account in a Newspim report, Nov 2025. Not an average. |
| Weverse DM, one member | 15 jelly (17 in app stores from 20 Jan 2026) | Weverse notice. Won price not confirmed. |
| Bubble, Fromm, Berriz, one member | Not confirmed | No dated, official price found. |
| Albums | Not confirmed | No official list price in our sources. |
| Concert ticket, standard seat (only in a month with a show) | 165,000 won | Herald POP, Sep 2025, for one 2025 show. |
| Total of the sourced won lines, ticket month | 217,500 won | Our arithmetic: 2,500 + 50,000 + 165,000. |
The total leaves out jelly, albums, other message apps, travel and goods. A month without a ticket is 52,500 won on the same lines.
For comparison, the 2026 KOFICE survey of people who have experienced Korean culture overseas found an average spend of 16.6 US dollars a month on all Korean content. That is a very different person from the fan above: she is the average of a great many people who stream a drama now and then.
What changes, and what to do about it
Prices in jelly, won and dollars
Platforms quote different currencies. Compare in your own currency at the payment screen on the day you buy, not from an article, including this one.
Rules change within a year
The DM price rose in January 2026, and the pre-sale was restructured by June. Check dates on anything you read about fan-club rules, and treat anything older than a year as history.
Set a ceiling before you subscribe
A subscription renews unless you cancel it. Our advice, not a sourced rule: decide a monthly limit first, and cancel anything you have not opened for a month.
Read the refund line
The example fan-sign notice says albums are not refunded if you lose the draw. The same is likely to be true of other event entries, so read the refund line before you apply.
There is a polite way to see all this. Fan platforms make it easy for people who love a group to feel close to it, and that is worth something. They also turn that feeling into a monthly charge. The best-informed fans, in our experience, enjoy the first and keep an eye on the second.