Many celebrities are turning to online fan meetings and concerts as ways to communicate with fans without physical contact to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Comedians Song Eun-yi and Kim Sook went live online on Feb. 29 in celebration of the fourth anniversary of Vivo TV, a podcast by the two comedians. The 1,200 seats for both Feb. 28 and Feb. 29 concerts sold out in less than three minutes but the events were canceled due to the spread of the new coronavirus.

The comedians decided to have a livestream fan meeting in the empty auditorium, putting nametags of the two people who were supposed to appear each night and pick prize winners from people who comment on their stream.

Many artists are also turning to online streaming as concerts are getting canceled.

Taeyeon, a member of Girls Generation, will be having a Naver V Live fan meeting on 7 p.m. Monday for the release of her new song, “Happy,” according to S.M. Entertainment on Thursday. The day is also her birthday and the date of the song’s release along with the music video.

Baek Ye-rin will also meet with fans through YouTube livestream as her performance in “Head in the Clouds” festival in Jakarta has been cancelled.

“For all the fans feeling sad about HITC being postponed, we wanted to lighten up your mood with a livestreaming of the performance we had prepared for Jakarta. See you all on YouTube, 6PM WIB/8PM KST!” tweeted Baek Ye-rin on Thursday.

K-pop group ITZY of JYP Entertainment will be having their showcase “ITZY LIVE PRIMERE” online at 8 p.m., Monday for their second mini-album “IT’Z ME” which will be released at 6 p.m. the same day.

Livestreaming in place of live concerts has received a positive response from fans. Sunwoo Jung-a performed a YouTube livestream jazz concert on Feb. 26 with over 1,000 viewers and a second online concert is being planned. according to her agency Magic Strawberry Sound.

On Valentine’s Day, boy band WINNER appeared on V Live as the Seoul concert, which was the last concert of their tour, got cancelled. The broadcast, which showed the performance and VCR that was to have been played at the concert along with the band members communicating with the fans through live comments, had 964,656 viewers.

“We are sad that we could not have the last concert in Seoul, but we think ending the tour by having time with our global fans is meaningful. We appreciate many people watching the online concert and enjoying it,” said Winner members.

V Live has become more popular especially with the livestreaming of BTS concert in Wimbledon last year attracting 140,000 simultaneous views despite being a paid service.

By Lim Jang-won (ljw@heraldcorp.com)