Back in 2007, the first year of virtual idols. A blue-haired girl from Japan emerged as an electronic singer. Her name was Hatsune Miku. She had no physical body and no real voice acting, but in just a few years, her influence surpassed many real stars, becoming the originator of the virtual idol world and laying the foundation for the UGC (user-generated content) model of virtual idols.

In 2012, Hatsune Miku's total revenue from various commercial activities around the world exceeded 6 million yuan. As the popularity and commercial value gradually increased, more virtual idols were born around the world, especially in Asia, such as Japan's Hololive, Rainbow Club, and South Korea's PlayV and PLAVE, which are all highly-regarded virtual idol organizations. However, unlike Hatsune Miku, these virtual idols rely more on the PGC model (platform generated content), created and operated by professional teams, and use complex technologies such as motion capture and real-time rendering to achieve instant interaction with the audience.

Although these PGC virtual idols have also achieved varying degrees of success, this model dominated by companies and platforms is also facing more and more challenges. First of all, the high production cost is a major problem. The content creation of virtual idols often requires a lot of resources. Whether it is character modeling, motion capture, or post-rendering, these require huge financial and technical support. In addition, the content production speed of the PGC model is slow, and it is difficult to meet the growing needs and diverse interests of the audience. Moreover, the content produced under this model is usually too dependent on the company's strategic direction, lacks creativity and flexibility, and it is difficult to truly establish a deep interaction and emotional connection with fans.

If the virtual idol industry seems to be "trapped" in the room of the PGC model, then technologies such as AI, Metaverse, and Web3 are like "door openers in the room", allowing users to have more say in UGC virtual idols. Gradually return to the public eye.

Freely create and share your own virtual idol works without relying on the resources of large companies, which makes the virtual idol ecosystem more open and inclusive, and more in line with the participation needs of current Internet users. This is the "new fan economy" that new technologies such as AI, Metaverse and Web3 have brought to the entertainment industry, and MEET48 is such a Metaverse project that brings together multiple new technologies.

MEET48: A virtual idol that subverts tradition

In the past year, I have often participated in Web3 industry conferences and traveled to several cities and countries with the deepest Web3 culture, including Hong Kong, Dubai, Japan, Singapore... and almost every time, I can see a very impressive project - MEET48. This Metaverse virtual community based on AI and Web3.0's diversified UGC entertainment content ecology is quietly changing the landscape of virtual idols.

After learning about it, I found that MEET48 is a metaverse virtual community based on AI and WEB3.0 diversified UGC entertainment content ecology. At the beginning of last month, I interviewed Kai, COO of MEET48, and got a deeper understanding of this metaverse project that spans virtual idols, AI, and Web3. Related reading: "MEET48's AI UGC Ecosystem Gamble and Ambition: Fan Economy Business".

MEET48, many people may have heard of this name for the first time. But when it comes to SNH48, many people are no strangers. For example, Ju Jingyi is a star who came out of this girl group. In the SNH48 annual general election on August 3 this year, they made a huge profit of 110 million, and behind this amazing "money-making" strength, it actually comes from the deep connection between fans and idols.

As a product of AI, virtual idols face natural challenges in community building and the cultivation of fan culture. Looking back, most of the failed virtual idols "fell in this pit". MEET48's solution is to quote and draw on the successful model of "48 Series Idols" that has been verified for ten years: through continuous interaction between the platform and fans, and annual general election voting, fans can deeply participate in the growth of idols and create a more sticky idol culture.

It has to be said that this move is very clever. In the construction of fan culture, the trial and error step is directly skipped, which can be said to be a win-win situation.

When mentioning MEET48 to people in the Web3 industry, many people's first reaction is "Oh, the metaverse project that rented a whole street in Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong". It seems that their activities are indeed successful. With such a large-scale promotion, they have demonstrated their ambition and strength in the field of virtual idols. During a conversation with an investor of MEET48, they also told me that MEET48 is the most star-studded project they have ever invested in.

MEET48 rented a whole street in Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong

In addition to the current on-chain voting channel platform, MEET48 has also made more arrangements in ecological applications, including the recent release of the ecological airdrop project CoinIdols on the TON ecosystem and H5 platform. This game is highly consistent with the culture of MEET48. At the same time, MEET48's Labs has also incubated the Coin Fish project, which is used to spread and attract fans of idol culture to MEET48 through multiple channels.

AI+UGC creates a new generation of virtual idols

Using AI to create content for virtual people is the core of breaking through the bottleneck of virtual human technology and market. Without high-frequency and high-quality content support, virtual people have no way to establish their own unique personality and carry out large-scale dissemination, and the high production costs limit only a few large capitals and large companies to participate and compete in this track. For example, Lehua Entertainment, a top domestic entertainment company, once relied on the technical support of ByteDance to create the A-SOUL girl group. In order to restart A-SOUL, Lehua even spent 30 million yuan to buy out the copyright of these technologies from ByteDance.

Meet48 relies on its self-developed multimodal large model to vertically train virtual human music and dance performances, and has launched corresponding AI tools and MaaS editors, allowing users to create their own virtual humans and virtual human performances with low-threshold UGC, and even virtual performances of idol groups, which is also a reflection of its core competitiveness.

In a previous communication with Kai, COO of MEET48, he revealed to me the amazing scale of their music and dance large model, with up to 500TB of high-quality music and dance videos as initial data for training, and this process has lasted for a year. As the ceiling of the AI industry, OpenAI used about 570GB of text data in the training of the language model GPT-3. In comparison, MEET48's 500TB of music and dance video data is nearly 1,000 times the amount of GPT-3 training data. Although GPT-3's dataset is mainly text, while MEET48's dataset covers various forms of content such as video and audio, this comparison can still make people intuitively feel the depth and breadth of MEET48's data accumulation.

At present, similar large models in vertical fields have not been seen on the market. Based on such a large model, IdolGPT developed by MEET48 allows users to upload their own photos and generate a virtual idol based on their appearance, including male and female versions and the creation of non-human idols. Through simple text input, IdolGPT can also generate virtual idol performance content such as songs and dance moves. It is currently undergoing closed testing, with 2,500 users participating in the test.

Using existing AI technology, MEET48 is about to launch a next-generation virtual idol UGC community, which will integrate virtual humans and virtual music and dance AIGC technology, combined with the LLM music and dance model and its MaaS service, to create a user community that spans the Web2.0 and Web3.0 eras, which will not only provide rich tools and resources for UGC and PGC content creators, but also open up new areas for UGA and PGA content creation.

This also means that MEET48's virtual idol UGC community will attract a large number of content creators to settle in, and will also promote the cultivation system of Web3.0 native virtual humans and real idols, and MEET48's UGC smart social metaverse will become the graphical social base of the entire community.

According to the data, MEET48's plan to build a virtual idol UGC community is not groundless. They have achieved a certain degree of prosperity in fan UGC construction. More than 24,000 user UGC videos have been uploaded, and the total number of user UGC videos watched has exceeded 10 million times. These data can basically be identified as completed by a single real user.

A friend who has been chasing stars for many years once told me: "Chasing stars and idols is actually projecting the ideal self onto them, which can help fans expand the boundaries of themselves. From then on, idols are part of my self, doing things I can't do." Because the threshold of "standing in the spotlight" was very high, fans could only project themselves onto idols. But now, MEET48 can use AI tools to not only allow fans to become "idol makers" and "partners" of idols, but also help everyone realize the "idol dream", compete with real idols, and enter the MEET48 metaverse together.

When we look back at the development of virtual idols, it is not difficult to find that this track is full of ups and downs and challenges. From the emergence of Hatsune Miku to the popularity of Luo Tianyi, and then to the "stop-up trend" of virtual idols in recent years, the virtual idol industry has undergone a major reshuffle. Although the traditional PGC model has brought a short-term prosperity, it cannot sustain the enthusiasm of fans and the sustained growth of the market for a long time.

Nowadays, the virtual idol industry has returned to the UGC stage and ushered in new development opportunities. MEET48 uses the decentralized nature of the Web3 blockchain and the content generation capabilities of AI to open up a new development path for the idol industry.

WEB3+Fan Economy: New Hope for Mass Adoption

In fact, it is not just the virtual idol industry that is looking for a breakthrough. The Web3 industry is also in urgent need of a "killer" application that can achieve widespread popularity.

In the Web3 industry, everyone says they want to do Mass Adoption (large-scale adoption), but all protocols and applications in the circle naturally have a ceiling of 100,000 curses. After the real users quickly reach the order of 100,000, they will face growth bottlenecks and even begin to decline.

The ecosystem of MEET48 can be regarded as a private domain entity. As a strategic partner, the real fans of SNH48 Group itself have a fan base of more than 30 million, of which 15% are global users. Assuming that MEET48 only converts 1% of real active users from them, it means that it will occupy "half of the country" in the Web3 industry. Now that MEET48 Dapp has 50,000 daily active users, it is not difficult to achieve the real Mass Adoption in the next stage of Web3.

During the construction of these years, MEET48 has completed its own Web3 platform and wallet, and opened up the MEET48 chain metaverse voting channel. Fans can earn points by creating content, watching videos and completing daily tasks, which can be exchanged for NFT voting tickets to support their favorite idols. The voting process of each NFT voting ticket will be recorded and saved on the chain to ensure that the entire process cannot be tampered with and is transparent and open.

From the on-chain data of MEET48 this year, it has grown very rapidly compared with last year. The Dapp activity page has also become the first in the social category of DappBay, and the cumulative registered users of MEET48's "2024 GIPR2" voting activity Dapp have exceeded 3 million.

The past voting model has been completely subverted as MEET48 introduced Web3. Through blockchain technology, MEET48 provides a fair and transparent Web3 voting platform. There is no need to buy physical products. Instead, you can earn points by creating content, watching videos, completing tasks, etc. These points can be exchanged for NFT voting tickets. Every voting process is recorded on the chain to ensure transparency and immutability, eliminating the waste and confusion of the past.

In addition, Web3 also gives fans more rights and rewards. Through the governance token and NFT mechanism, every support behavior of fans will be recorded on the blockchain and have the opportunity to obtain value-added benefits. For outsiders, governance tokens and NFTs may be new, but for the Web3 industry, this "social token economy" model is already very mature.

More importantly, MEET48 has redefined the relationship between idols and fans through the confirmation of Web3. Fans are not only supporters of idols, but also partners in the idols' careers. Through the governance token and NFT mechanism, every support from fans will be recorded on the blockchain, and the holders of tokens and NFTs can also enjoy value-added benefits. This two-way interactive relationship gives fans more rights and rewards.

These votes and revenues not only created a brilliant result for this year's general election, but also laid the foundation for the future global idol voting. Therefore, in 2025, MEET48 will plan to integrate SNH48's idols and hold a global idol voting event in Hong Kong to further expand the international influence of MEET48 and the entire 48 series of idols, which will attract fans and contestants from all over the world and become a grand event for virtual idols and real idols to compete on the same stage.

With MEET48 setting up an office in Japan this month and the Korean office expected to open on October 1, MEET48 will participate in and host multiple events in the next month or two to further penetrate overseas markets.

At the official opening party of WebX in Japan co-hosted with Line Next on August 27, MEET48, as the title sponsor of the event, will lead SNH48, well-known Japanese idols and other performers to participate in WebX. On September 4, also in Japan, MEET48 sponsored the SNH48 girl group TOP16 tour in Tokyo, Japan, showing that MEET48 is expanding its influence through these international events and further promoting its globalization strategy of virtual idols and Web3.

Not only in Japan, during the Token2049 event in Singapore, MEET48 will also co-host the "Back To The Streets" large-scale AI+Web3 application Side Event with Hape on the evening of September 18, and will also participate in Token2049 as a platinum sponsor to further demonstrate MEET48's global strategic layout and its important role in the Web3 ecosystem.

It is no longer about dividing the "cake" or just making the "cake" bigger. MEET48 is creating a brand new "cake". With the two powerful tools of Web3 and AI, MEET48 has taken a unique path and become a disruptor in the entertainment industry.

I believe that in the near future, countless virtual idols created by users themselves will be born on the MEET48 platform, and the best of them will stand out in the voting and become the top KOL idols. At that time, virtual idols will perform and campaign with real idols on the same stage, truly presenting a metaverse platform that combines virtuality and reality to create and build together.

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