Oh cool! Bao talked about my tweet! Disclaimer about my list: 1. Kawa Entertainment still exists as a merch company, but they used to be a merch company that also had a "talent owns their IP" vtuber agency like VShojo. Kawa's merch is very good, and you should buy some. 2. AkioAir had all their talents graduate in 2023, but the owner didn't announce that they were shutting down until 2024. 3. NEXAS hasn't shut down yet, and won't shut down until January 31st of 2025 but they already announced that they have. 4. Only AuroraLiveVR EN is shutting down. Their chinese branch will continue. However, ALVR EN's twitter hasn't announced their dissolution yet, but their final talent mentioned that they were shutting down when she graduated. 5. I'm certain that I missed a few agencies for sure, and a few of these are JP and ID agencies.
I gonna commandeer a reply to talk about the insane microcosm that was Yume+ and their collapse. Yume+ debuted as a small corpo with 4 talents early 2024. They collapsed 6 months later debuting 1 extra talent 3/4 months after the others, and hosting 1 concert for the group. The amount of BS that happened in this corp was insane. Like the one extra talent that debuted was forced into a agreement to delay her debut and made to work on assests and video editing for the rest of the girls, and was excluded from any deals made pre her debut which included Yume+ inclusion in Rift runner set 2. She was also suppose to be excluded from the concert but due to "issues" the concert has to be delayed which meant they had to add her in to not seem exclusionary. This is one of the craziest predatory contracts I've seen. But it gets crazier cause the CEO himself ghosted the entire company cause the dude literally had no plan to run the corpo. The talents and staff took a company wide vote to oust him and dismantle the company. All talents getting to keep their IP. But also due to how thing went down the talents also have basically no NDA that will apply to them so they talked pretty openly about everything. Like this entire situation was insane like nothing else and barely anyone saw it due to how small they were. 3 of the talents are still active under these IPs so please check them out as they are all hard working and amazing creators. Raein Clowd, Aimee, and Meru Umiko.
@@rafaelfigfigueiredo2988 it was over a year, it just felt REALLY quick by HoloEN standards because there was a bit longer between Myth and Council and then between Council and Advent.
What Bao said is so true. Put simply, too many startups thought they could copy the Nijisanji model of massive numbers of debuts, very quickly, when instead they should've copied the Hololive model of slowly building up a small first generation, until it's proven they're sustainable, then once that's done, you have the footing to start thinking about creating more generations. VAllure is great example of the opposite of these failed corpo's, being openly successful, because they have a small number of talents, targeting a lazer-focused niche, & are only now starting to talk about a 2nd gen, after 6+ months of success.
The other successful strat is to copy VShojo by recruiting established talents and letting them keep their IPs even if they leave. Talents come in with an established fandom, get the managerial and marketing support they need, and then go back to being independent once their contract expires.
@@TheMockingjay74why do people hate vshojo? Just curious. They seem to let their talents have a lot of freedom and most of them are pretty entertaining and seem like good people.
Between the 20 companies that closed, there are 297 total Vtubers, 198 became Independant VTubers, and 99 either were fired, retired completely, or graduated. That's crazy!
V reverie folded but Salmon Lordette and Ranna Ianna managed to get back the rights to the characters recently thankfully. -IF ONLY RETIRED HOLOMEMS COULD DO THAT-
They could @@gamerguy425but at the same time they prefer not to do it because the whole process to do so is already a pain in the mind....and uh,also because "this" and "that" happened for certain..ahem, "retired streamers"
@@abimaelesparza5301 I don't really understand what you're talking about in the last part. Are you referring to the ones that ended from more dark circumstances like Hitomi Chris, Aloe and Rushia?
Thank you, Bao. My agency exploded this year and hearing someone finally telling the public the behind the scenes details we can’t talk about ourselves is giving me so much courage. I appreciate you. 💙💙
Wise words by Bao, who has seen some of the carnage, she has been a victim of failed businesses before. In some way this industry is like the music business used to be.
Even Hololive started with just Tokino Sora streaming to thirteen viewers. She was the lone talent for like a year and 100k subscribers (I think, I'm not positive on exact numbers) before they started adding in the rest of Gen 0. Bao, why are you so fuckin' smart and sexy?
Yes. Cover spent years building up to where they could even be ready to start the EN branch in 2020. Even if Myth didn't pop off like they did, Hololive would have been fine because it built that reliable foundation over years. Like most booms, it will be over already if you're trend chasing.
This industry needs actual agents. Lawyers and industry experts who have a legal responsibility to represent their clients' interest and who are not producers themselves.
A vtuber guild or union. It would have to be a non-profit with any profit going into improving itself or being paid directly back to the talent. Entrance into the guild/union would be tricky because of the high startup costs of being a vtuber. They would pay lawyers to look over contracts and offer advice or a counter offer. It would be great if it can reduce costs and reduce the workload for already established indie vtubers. While providing a better path and resources for people to get started vtubing. Though privacy would have to be a major pillar of it.
@BobBigWheels A union would be a good way to make sure that producers encourage prospective talent to engage responsible agent-representatives prior to contracting, but you don't need a union or a non-profit to motivate an effective talent agency.
@@bilegttsolmon6027 One thing is that if there's not much money involved, then there also shouldn't be that much at risk in the contract, so not having an agent shouldn't be a big deal. Also, for continued representation - especially when the firm or agency specializes - the real costs actually can be kind of small sometimes. Lastly, agencies can contract for continuous representation in the hopes that their clients' businesses will grow. This also incentivizes them to wean some of the field of prospects and to encourage their clients to engage with reputable and successful producers - something which those producers should love for that it keeps some other riffraff producers out of competition for the best talent.
@@bilegttsolmon6027 First I'd say, if there's not a lot of money involved, then there's probably not a lot at risk to not being represented. Secondly, I think you might be surprised at just how low the real costs of continued representation can be, especially if an agency or firm specializes (although, whether they pass on those efficiencies to their clients is another matter). Finally, a representative relationship can be contracted to be long-term, taken on by an agency in the hopes that their client will grow with time; this incentivizes the agencies to winnow the field of prospects some, and to encourage their clients towards reputable and successful producers. Good producers will love these behaviors from the agencies, as from the producers' perspective the agencies are helping them by sharing some of the prospecting burden and preventing some losses to competition from less scrupulous market spoilers - and there you've got another reason why even the producers might be inclined to encourage any prospective talent to first seek effective representation.
While some of what Bao is saying certainly applies to some of these agencies, not all of them are predatory. I'd like to provide my first-hand account with Amber Glow. I joined their support staff as a video editor in October of last year and sadly watched it die from the inside. TBH I knew it didn't have much longer when I came in, and I was hoping my videos might be able to help turn things around. But it wasn't enough. The CEO and managers really did care about the talents. Super lenient with streaming quotas, payouts were timely, did everything they could to resolve disputes between members, etc. I do think debuting too many members too quickly was a mistake, but I don't know what was going on behind the scenes there since I joined well after the last generation debuted. And most of the former members did end up keeping their models and personas and are still streaming as indies a year later.
I’m glad Bao talked about this, it is constantly being talked about by the newstubers but it gets lost in the day by day and taken for granted. Bao talking about it highlights the human element and people suffering but also how big of a systemic issue it is.
And for male vtubers, we have one good option: First Stage Production, since Phase has stated they'll never hire male talents and Holostars is proving to be a worse place for male talents than even Kurosanji. Heck, even to this day, Niji is still the only large vtuber agency where a man has anything resembling equal opportunity. Even if that means unethical managment. Their audience is the only audience of a co-ed agency that lacks the type of fan who hate male vtubers, which makes a HUGE difference in whether a man has a chance. Sadly, they still have a monopoly on the audience that actually likes and supports male vtubers. We need more agencies to take away Niji's stranglehold on male vtuber opportunity.
I watched VReverie's descent in real time. Followed my favorite indie there after she graduated. Emotional rollercoaster aside, it sucked to see her come back like a year later and some people be really shitty like, "I thought you graduated, why are you back." She wasn't even really able to talk about it bc of nda. I am glad she's back to thriving as of now. I do wish we could have more companies that actually care about thier talents. I look forward to the day when we hopefully do
I do hope furi furntail gets ownership back of her channel and character considering she played a big part in her creation and design. If by some miracle all the ex talents get their old corpo ip back even if they don't end up using them I'd be happy to see the characters effectively back home where they belong.
@@christopherpage2622 Certain ex talents will never get that IP back and one has stated she has no plans to even look into it. The only 1 that MIGHT is Bri, as she stated on her alt twitter account that she is getting a lawyer to go over their contract. Umi and the ones that joined a new corpo are not interested in even getting them back as they rather put that behind them
@@CillmaCuvas well she was a certain pink fox, but now she's back to being her fairy bunny self. She's also been a vtuber rigger for many years if that helps
@@christopherpage2622 I absolutely agree, they definitely do all deserve their ip back. Sucks having to see someone who rigged their own model not be allowed to still use it or really be able to have it under their portfolio. After you put so much effort into building a character too, there's really no one else they should belong with than the talent.
buncha business fools thought they smelled quick cash, wanted to get rich quick, opened a vtuber agency thinking they could exploit basically free labor... folded, rip.
Idol was so close to , but it had dedicated staff and the company forged ties with Brave leading to Brave taking it over. Idol also has a loyal fanbase that thanks to Kai they engage weekly with.
The way Idol and Brave happened was about as good as it can be. Letting talent opt out of the merge and go indie, with all the IP that the talent put 90% of the effort in to build the brand in the first place. Rin can still be Rin, and the main cost is one year of revenue share, and that is amazing.
@@OriginalPiMan Yea say what you want about Aviel (Old Ceo) at least before he bailed he gave Idol another chance. Aviels networking really saved Idol in the end
The problem with Idol prior to Brave buying them, was that Aviel went too hard on "paying the talents a fair rate", vtubers in corpos do deserve to be paid but you can't give them such a large cut of the money because you start losing money. Idol was very much on the edge of funds running dry.
@@OriginalPiMan Even better the former members I think are still free to collab with people who stayed at Idol. Idol lost all of e-sakai ultimately but I am glad they handled the merger well, were transparent about it to fans and saved the company
I still think that if Production kawaii hadn't "merged" or sold to Culture Entertainment they would still be around today. The core people behind kawaii were dedicated to what they were doing.. I think CE were just looking at the money side of things and decided to cut their costs and fold up shop. It's especially sad because I think things were starting to turn around for them. I disagree with some of Bao's closing statements here.. About NONE of them understanding content creation. PRISM and Production kawaii both gave the IPs to the talents. Probably the outliers in this situation.. but I feel like those two companies especially shouldn't be lumped in with the rest.
The way I see it, most of these are outfits that shouldn't have existed in the first place. So many vtuber corps seem to be run by clueless people who simply want to make money, and have no real capacity to actually bolster their talents. So in the end, this is exactly what needed to happen. Consolidation of top talent into a handful of companies that are actually serious. This is what the industry should be. That said, the loss of kawaii is a blow to us all since they clearly were such a company.
Agreed. From what has been described, talents and the staff that worked with them were still dedicated at PK, but people who were "higher up" weren't. I had forgotten that there had been that deal before. It's pretty similar to how things ended for Prism. They joined with Sony and things were going fine until Sony decided it wasn't interested in vtubers, most likely because any profits would be small. One other that I think was similar was Project Kavvai. Air Malaysia started that at a time when there was basically no air travel, so it was probably more of an advertisement thing, or some kind of investment that the higher ups decided they didn't need anymore when business picked up again.
Kawaii burned all the goodwill they had by slandering Gen 3 with lies about them supposedly “being lazy and difficult to work with”. Gen 3 BTW ended up creating their own agency that you might have heard of: V-Dere.
@@CJODell12 yeah, they mismanaged it, first by ignoring the conflict that was festering in the gen, and then they thought they could return to BAU of not doing anything after not doing anything for so long. They lost 2 of their 3 best performing talents and lost the momentum, thanks to management being full of hubris. Sadly, this is a symptom of other companies too, we saw it in Nijisanji, even though they have not failed yet (due to their size I believe) etc.
As Bao kept talking, everything she said kept going through my brain as " how to VShojo" ... it's silly to me how I see company after company fall into the trap of making a company in the JPN mold for the En audience - Yeah, a lot of VTuber fans are Japanophiles, but that doesn't mean that the idol model is right for the EN market.
at the same time, much of what she's talking about is stuff yagoo's specifically called out to short-sighted investors when they tried to push accelerating the rate of debuts. and nijisanji's rapid debuts is not only contributing to en's problems, but it's also starting to show signs of stressing their jp side as well. their jp revenues are increasing, but their live stream revenues didn't increase proportional to their streamer count increase, and that's a pretty good hint they're stretching themselves thin.
While Hololive isn't without their issues, I don't think the English market cares for the idol culture as much as JP does. We're here more for the personalities and streams, the idol stuff is secondary. We only enjoy and buy tickets for the concerts and merch because we enjoy the talents so much.
Gunrun has a LOT of experience and a good chunk of money to invest and pretty much only made deals with vtubers with an existing large fanbase. This can't easily be copied
@@autohmaeTo an extent, but most of VShojo’s expansions have been fuelled by poaching the best talents from Nijisanji’s slow collapse. While there may only be one Niji, most of the recently collapsed agencies are Niji copycats, which means there’s a large pool of proven talents for a VSJ copycat to pull from.
"Not everyone can be YAGOO". I think a lot of people is unaware that Tanigo started as a regular employee at Sanrio, after he got enough experience he started his own company producing electronics which He SOLD and used the money to found the technology company that would be parent to Hololive. They even still have like two games on steam. It was because they were toying with the technology and looking into how to showcase it that Sora and A-Chan with their proposal of using it for doing streaming and Idol activities was the seed that started the idea of moving into that direction, and with his experience he decided to take the chance and try it as a venture which he already was able to navigate from his experience prior. People who doesn't have business experience and doesn't understand content creation is going to have expectations that don't align with the reality of the Vtubing landscape. It's not about competing with Holo or other agencies, it's about growing the business and supporting the talents so that their work becomes profitable and their brand grows organically. Which is far from being a "fast" or "easy" money making scheme. But the important part is the experience, without proper business experience it's not possible to have a successful company, regardless of what the company produces.
And not everyone can be Sakana either, that dude's company almost folded in the first month of Phase Origin debut. Which is quite funny as it could go down in history as the fastest bankrupted Vtuber company LOL, dood
yeah honestly... It sucks for the Vtubers who ended up in debt cos they upgraded their equipment in hopes of streaming better only to lose their company backing and struggling to market themselves as Indies
I think the reasons agencies keep pushing out vtubers are because: 1. They see each model as a cash cow generating profit. Like there's an initial investment in terms of rigging and hiring costs but then these vtubers will start generating monthly profit. The more vtubers you have the more subs/supas/ad revenue you get every month. 2. They want hit on that big time hit, like Pipkin Pippa for Phase Connect or Rin Penrose for Idol. Having one talent blow can generate so much revenue for the company.
@@Xickhololive had a few people blow up before gura even debuted - fubuki had a million subs on her bilibili before gura even debuted, and kiryu coco and korone also had over half a million subs each on youtube by then. gura obviously blast them out of the water by going viral in the west, but hololive by no means was without existing hits at her debut.
@@dead-claudiaHololive has a few unicorns that really bring in the big bucks, aside from gura and those listed. There's Susei, Marine, Calli, etc... People pay to see their concerts and regularly watch/listen to music and MVs.
@@dead-claudia I don't mean to diminish those accomplishments. But I do think Gura's success was the one that motivated the most get-rich-quick start-ups.
I was just reading about P. Kawaii yesterday to know what happened to the members, even graduated ones and this is crazy, at least they could keep their models. But it also feels there's as many agencies showing up recently. I think last week a new one with 8 members just debuted. It really feels like that, they just want to see if any talent sticks. Even worse, after being just debuted what some of them talked about was how they wanted more waves, to be "senpai" and while I get that it's fine to want success for the company and see it grow... dude you just debuted a whole gen....
Biggest rule of thumb when you're doing a vtuber agency: never exert yourself to the point it impacts upon you or your talents fatally. As seen with many small vtuber agencies, they try to reach & gonble up the biggest of things to expand ASAP but by doing so, they add more pressure & strife to their vtubers to the point they hecome absolutely drained or just graduate too. The CEOs of these agencies try to be Yagoo & GunRun from Hololive & Vshojo respectively but ultimately, *they fly too close to the Sun & die.*
I know Bao's been around as a content creator for a long time, but it's always surprising to me when she addresses the VTuber industry with so much knowledge, maybe it's the way she expresses her thoughts so clearly, and she's so down-to-earth too. I really admire this silly whale ngl.
agencies will never do that, for the same reason why streaming services won't renew past 5 seasons and often cancel by the 2nd (while simultaneously greenlighting all other new shows). debuts drag in the most new viewers, and the business model, based on partners and sponsorships, values these viewers the most. sponsors want as wide of a reach as possible, so they want to see as many new viewers (representing growth and projected growth). they assume that old viewers will be retained (tho tbh sponsors wouldn't really care even if they left), and there's no profit (growth) in improving the experience for old viewers anyway. spending money to retain the same audience is technically a loss for the agency and completely irrelevant to sponsors. ultimately agencies are companies, and companies are profit-driven institutions. there job is not to cultivate an industry, but to make the most profit (which we assume in the free market cultivates an industry). unless you make some sort of co-op vtuber agency, there's no way to avoid this. also, Japanese vtuber agencies are literally just 360 deals (in music). you give up your IP in exchange for getting some funding/capital. it's unimaginable in every other industry (imagine if scientific theories were named after the company that funded the scientist rather than the scientist), but in entertainment it's the norm lmao.
CEO's and not thinking short term, challenge impossible. Also bao is so right about this and knowledgeable. I feel there's definitely something to be gained if expert vtubers would create like, idk, a union or expert center to share this kinda stuff with newbies. I'm thinking of the ladies that really know their stuff about business such as bao, lily, geega and others.
This happens in all new niches. There is a race for power, with most people flaming out very quickly. All of these agency failures were inevitable if vtubing was profitable, so all the failures is a good thing for vtubing. Ideally, we want to get to a point where agencies aren't a thing anymore, and it is slowly going in that direction. I'm optimistic that this method of streaming will be popular for a very long time.
at the very least, mythic and vshojo won't be in a world of pain. cover corp is a unicorn rn, but my concern is a few ceos down the line, they're gonna have similar issues to what the motown music industry suffered in the 60s with their 360 deals destroying their talent while also causing revenues to plummet. bc it's this that these vtuber agencies are seemingly running into.
This is the appeal of Bao in specific, and Vtubers in general: Because of the medium, they can be unhinged and raw in ways most streamers can't, but at the same time, they are highly talented people with areas of interest and expertise, so in the same individual, you can get hysterical screeching begging for a wolfman to give them puppies and a masterclass in the current state of media agencies.
@@dead-claudia That's what I meant to say. Poor choice of words on my part. She actually acts like a normal person for once. I don't know what to feel aboutthat.
This reminds me that earlier this year I looked into an agency for vtubers that was starting to accept auditions and found some worrying stuff. Note that this agency isn't on the list you showed here, because they haven't yet debuted a single talent from those auditions and haven't disbanded. At first, all I'd found was that the founder of the agency had a nearly decade-long history of trying a project, then quitting when it didn't get successful within a few weeks. I gave up at that point, as I'd learned all I needed to know, but later on the almighty algorithm 'blessed' me with some cursed knowledge. The owner had actually founded a previous agency, hired a single vtuber to be the mascot, then disbanded and fired that vtuber before rebranding the entire agency despite never even debuting that mascot-vtuber. This only got worse from there though because while looking into it further, I found that the agency is claiming they have never hired a single talent, yet I have proof they hired exactly one (their mascot vtuber). And I mean, that's kinda technically true. The old name hired that vtuber, not the new name, but it was the same founder and he just rebranded instead of dissolving the agency (their own webpage even states it was a rebrand, not a full dissolution). So far as I'm concerned, they're basically the same agency. Additionally, I did find people who claimed to have auditioned for that previous agency and they all had pretty universal negatives about the interview process, though they provided no proof they ever auditioned so I'm taking their negatives with a pound of salt. What really kinda annoys me though is the reason I'd heard of this agency was because another big name vtuber I followed at the time retweeted their audition announcement. And I'm not mad at them for doing it, but I am kinda disappointed that they did that, since it might have lead to a lot of vtubers applying for what I'm worried will be another name on the list of failed agencies for 2025.
I remember when Jocat first revealed his vtuber model, he tweeted about forming a vtuber agency with a second generation debuting about 3 months after the first, only to tweet the next day that the agency was shutting down. He later had to clarify that this all was a joke, because it wasn’t unrealistic enough from reality
Such an insightful clip. I think Bao hit the nail on head with her rant. These CEOs and managers totally didn't understand content creation at all. The CEOs and investors had the capital. They figured that the Vtubers would be their content creation "experts" and hired them to do ALL the content creation. But they didn't understand the industry of content at all, most of these young boys and girls they interviewed and accepted are young, fresh content creators who had not made it big on the internet, and don't really know how to really get their content viral. So these young talents really needed more coaching, support and advice from the management in order to grow their brand. So when the management themselves had no idea how to publicise themselves, they are stuck in a rut. The only strategy they could obviously see was from companies like Niji, who on the surface are successful, but we all know how much their talents are actually struggling with the lack of support.
*My friend and I were scouted by an agency. Won’t say which one, but it’s a BIG one. We turned them down, because I justifiably have trust issues. We’re fine with our current publisher, that lets us do whatever we want* 😈
you know, bao is actually right about CEOs being narcissists. most of the rich and powerful people are narcissists or even psychopaths (outdated term but more recognizable) and it's almost necessary. a normal person doesn't have the interest nor the ability to abuse their employees like that solely for their own profit
Honestly, everything she's saying is true. From a marketing perspective, it's a really good way to grow. It's better to get 1,000 dedicated fans who'll for sure buy your merch cuz they connect with your brand that much than 5,000 fans who have a 30/70 chance to buy/not buy, respectively. Developing brand identity is like day 1 stuff so if a manager isn't understanding that, I highly doubt that persons competency as a manager. It's really sad that people get preyed upon like this. If you're given a contract, look over it with a lawyer. Take a copy home and really read and understand it. I cannot stress that enough because there are assholes in the world who'll take advantage of you. Don't fall prey to their tricks. Approach everything with a clear head and if you don't feel you have a clear head, DO NOT SIGN.
So there's a thing in the trucking world we called operating authority Most vTubers are operating under someone else's authority and so they don't own their own thing That's why Independent operators have their own authority
Respect the talents. Something many investors don't even care to try to understand. One video for investors i watched, he called vtuber watchers people that would watch Joe Rogan or whatever. Very rude, zero Respect for fans, no understanding of vtubers, devoid of soul.
@@Speed001investors will happily disrespect themselves just to chase a quick buck. expecting them to respect others is like expecting a car to move by asking it to move. sure, it might if someone's making it move, but they don't normally move on their own accord.
I think basing your business off of a niche subculture is kinda like break dancing on a tightrope with no safety and a lot of them fall because of how businesses function sadly
God she was popping the f off with this. BANGER AFTER BANGER. I’m hoping to eventually start content creation after I get some of my shit together. Maybe do V-tubing but not sure yet. This has been an interesting perspective to look at into the business side of being a V-tuber.
Wow. The stuff you can learn in one video. Thank you Ms. Bao for not just reacting, but providing more background on the subject. (its a refreshing change from big news)
Honestly this is just modern startup culture mixed with the unrealistic expectation of growth that plagues current day corporate America. Also spot on about most CEOs being narcissistic. The only humble CEOs I've ever seen are people who started from nothing and/or grew into this positions naturally. Those who seek to be CEOs are almost always selfish and full of themselves.
Funny things is, Sakana initially is kinda like those "snob" CEO except he is actually passionate about vtubing. Then Pippa had enough of how Sakana treated them like crap. And before Sakana know it, Pippa already brought entire Phase Origin to openly revolt against Sakana. This event actually gave Sakana a cold hard reality check and became a better CEO because of that, dood.
Thank you for talking about this Bao! I was one of the very lucky ones who were able to buy out my IP, but it feels... weird... to use it, so I prefer not to. I poured my everything into that character for over a year, but that's it. I felt like I was the only one pushing to get myself out there, yanno? And I'm sure my whole gen felt the same. The saddest part is when you lose that and people don't want to associate with you anymore because you're no longer corpo. I've learned the people why liked me for my corpo name and not me were never my friends to begin with, but it still stings, man. But I still want to hold out hope there're good corpos out there.
There are some on that list that are easy to forget because this has been ongoing through the whole year. I am surprised to se AOI ID on there just because I lost track of them in 2021 when they had a whole gen graduate on one day. I wonder how many of them were debating closure, and seeing simlar companirs close made them admit that the bubble was over and it was going to be a slow climbe now.
I never comment on this stuff, but man, it's fucking hilarious to me how as soon as Hololive began to exist, suddenly you have all these companies seeing dollar signs, and they don't really understand, or I guess they aren't interested in, creating value, they're more interested in essentially pump-and-dumping the Vtuber space. So they snatch up some venture funding, they pay some upfront graphic design costs, and they hit social media in the fandom space where they know they can quickly onboard a bunch of girls and guys who all fell into Vtuber fandom and probably fantasized about themselves getting into Hololive or Nijisanji or something so they could know what it feels like to be popular and have lots of superchats and 5000 people watching them. But none of these people have proven anything, they just want the result. The companies don't care, they just need someone to put onscreen because in their minds, as long as they're backing some streamers, those streamers will blow up. And they're banking on the fact that if they onboard and shove out 100 streamers in a year, one of them will be cool enough to make the money back, and possibly lift the rest up. But streaming doesn't work like that. There's so, so, so many people on Twitch toiling in the 10 viewer range, great personalities and people, probably have the chops to make it, but they likely never will. Blowing up and being a huge success is so much of a narrow window to hit that 99.9% will never get there. But the companies are just in it because they see that this space is growing and they hope that when the chips fall and things settle out, they're one of the ones still standing.
you say this as if nijisanji wasn't literally one of those companies. they just had a ceo smart enough to not overextend early. but that latest statement makes me suspect riku might be getting ready to overextend the jp side
@@dead-claudia I don't think that's true, since from what I understand they were pretty full with Japanese streamers long before they branched out to English after Hololive. The difference is back then they clearly were just a small company focusing on facilitating small streamers having access to each other for collabs and stuff. But when they started bulking their roster on both sides of the language spectrum, they also bulked staff and production costs and tried to oversell their streamers that were ostensibly fine but being massively fucked by costs and contracts behind the scenes. They got a taste for bigger money and they just hit the gas too much and didn't care about the well-being or support behind the scenes because their roster was, I suppose, in their mind big enough to handle the churn (it wasn't).
Seems like we're indeed in the era of market boom in the industry. There will be more of vtuber agencies getting blown outta the water next year. It'll take a couple years at least for the industry to stabelize and we see the titans of the segment. There's at least two of them already quite established and stable (VShojo and Hololive), so let's see who's gonna be the next one to actually stabilize itself and build presence enough to rival the other two.
i think the shotgun approach they all take is trying to catch lightning in a bottle, like a gura, like iron mouse even some niji boys. THing is, you cant really do that.
Yup, for every Gura or Ironmouse, there's dozens (maybe hundreds) of mediocre vtubers who can only pull 30 viewers on a good day and are unlikely to ever improve significantly. (Though, to be fair, I follow one like that and she says vtubing isn't her life, it isn't her main source of income. She does it for fun and is completely happy with having 10-15 viewers most days. She likes to know each regular individually and couldn't do that if she had thousands of people in her chat.)
Bao could be a vtuber agency consultant. she's got experience and knows what works and what doesn't. although i think it would probably take a lot of time away from her streaming
I must point out that most of this sadly doesn't apply to male vtubers. Without agency backing, its nearly impossible for us to gain any exposure and visibility. The majority of successful male indies are those who already built a large audience elsewhere BEFORE becoming a vtuber. And even then, they lost a portion of that fanbase when becoming a vtuber because a large chunk of the wider audience are off-put by vtuber avatars. On top of that, the vast majority of the pre-existing vtuber audience are either apathetic, disinterested, or outright dislike male vtubers. Being a non-established indie male vtuber is like being a homeless person performing in a street corner for pennies and nickels. Once in a blue moon, one will get lucky enough to receive some solid dollars or be scouted by someone with the influence to reward a man on his merits and talents. But its an extreme rarity. The majority have to perform and beg for scraps and crumbs. We men really have no other choice but to look for shelter at an agency, in order to have anything close to a chance of our merits being seen instead of being held back based on our biology. Especially those of us who don't do BFE or fujo-bait.
It's not "because I'm male". It's your SOCIAL ABILITY. Put the money in for a quality mic and a model with good facial tracking and expressive toggles. Actually put emotion into your speech. Remember to use your toggles. Remember to be expressive. Pay for classes if you struggle with that, and improve. Stream games that allow you to talk with your chat while you play. Learn how to multi-task. Make friends with other streamers behind the scenes. CURATE AND MAINTAIN A SANITIZED SOCIAL MEDIA, OR FIND AN ECHO CHAMBER AND CURATE TO THEM. Actually market yourself. Understand that twitch and youtube are saturated and that viewership and money are not going to fall into your lap. Study incel retoric as a HOW NOT TO BEHAVE and WHAT NOT TO TYPE OR SAY. Because complaining about how hard it is for your gender complained to other genders instantly clocks as incel rhetoric even if it isn't your intention. There are PLENTY of 4-view streamers with a wide variety of gender expression. Complaining how tough it is gets you nowhere; it makes you look bad. The entertainment industry is all about how you are percieved. Go to college or get a job if you can't handle the stress and difficulty, and understand that jobs that make a lot of money are socially, psychologically, and physically draining too.
Honestly, the more I think about the perception I have on the Vtuber Agencies, are basically like what Multi-Channel Networks used to be like back in the day (examples such as Machinima, Maker Studios, and Fullscreen), but with extra steps. Extra steps such as a new persona, although some of those agencies adapt the way of debuting established talents within the Vtubing scene (such as Vshojo) as part of the company.
They are probably thinking "If one of these characters takes off, I can make bank off merch and media rights. Hopefully that happens before I run out of investors. If not, I move on to the next racket."
Sadly most of these agencies pop up just to scam streamers and end up shutting down. The fact that 20 agencies shut down this year and no one has heard of them is nuts.
Thank you for giving me a good insight on the dark reality of VTuber agencies and how it can go wrong. All that hard work just gone if the company falls apart, like damn.
They only care about how much money they can make off the VTubers on debut/who pops off on their own, defeating the primary reason to join these agencies.
Luckily, some agencies were humane on the way out. Production Kawaii gave their talent the IP on the way out, as I believe Prism did. The newest generation before they went out if business, Euphemeria (sp?) have banded together as indies as an informal group.
Fauna's graduation is still one of the most absolutely shocking and unexpected ones in vtuber history to me, she seemed like one of the top 3 I'd think would be staying there since she loves being, loves her character and idol and loved all her fellow talents. How could they not find some kind of solution or compromise? I also had like 3 of my first and favorite vtubers graduate in one year (or announce it) between Amano Serafi, Amelia Watson, and Fauna
reminds me of 2 of my friends who were corpo Vtubers before, it was super early in the ENVtuber market and there agencies had eather no real plan of where to go with it or wanted to branch out to a different region, one was still stuck in there contract and the other could just rebuild there community not that long ago after there graduation, luckely for both of them, we were all realy close and we knew what was going on and where we could find them and promoted them to others who might not get the hint who these new Vtubers were, heck, one of them even could almost keep there model but in the last sec the company said no and they had to think of a redesign, are they as successfull as they were as corpos? no, but there current communitys are loyal to them and that's what counts.
Finding them again is true. I had to have people spell it out for me when the subtle hinting goes over my head. Hell I never know someone I had once followed was them! It took a random collab with a group I shrugged off, to realize their voice.
Thanks for giving your perspective on the situation. Unfortunately making any kind of living in arts and entertainment right now has gotten so shaky I'm sure this will all get worse before it gets better. Not least of which because there seem to be something between 20-200+ debuts on the slate (worldwide) in the coming months... I watched this video right before the Vtuber awards and... felt bad for Ceres Fauna who immediately got two awards. I'm sure there were viewers that got introduced to her for the first time and will now buy merch or otherwise throw hololive some money between now and her graduation as a result. One really has to wonder what percentage of those proceeds she'll ever see, if any.
I want to see Bao make a vtu er agency, not because it's easy but because I believe she could actually do it. She's familiar with the game and has great potential.
joining a startup vtuber agency is such a massive gamble. feel bad for all the people out there that got roped into these with the idea that they are all 'corpo' and of equal value to Hololive or Nijisanji.... it's like comparing a random tech startup with Google or Apple. i do hope some 'mid tier' agencys can flourish. but theyll really need to be run like a well oiled machine & not just hoping theyll immediately become Hololive in under a year.
ironically nijisanji's starting to run into issues for this very reason. they're trying to beat hololive in a market that's inherently driven not by pure competition, but by a mix of cooperation and competition. it's a market where everyone is racing to stand on each other's shoulders and share a slice of their pie, not a market where you can reliably slice up that pie (exception: most bfe/gfe).
@@dead-claudia Nijisanji has a failure in how they decided to rapidly expand beyond what they could handle (creating and promptly shutting down all their external branches... EN is most likely next). Nijisanji JP however is thriving just as much as Hololive JP. Cus that's their flagship that they actually care about. New Startup Vtuber Agency's however... the goal should be just to SURVIVE at all. Not even for competing or sharing an existing pie. Ya gotta become the pan itself. A complete foundation that'll make you reliable enough to ACTUALLY compete. This is why Vshojo still exists, cus they hired established talent. And just as useful, letting go of talent that didn't want to be there. The perfect setup though is Established Talent + New Trainees. That way you can become recognizable, but also mold a next generation from the previous experience.... And with how many contracts are ending recently, I wonder if any new Agency's will take up that challenge.
Seeing some of these smaller/mid sized corpos that imploded from shitty management is really frustrating, because the way some leadership acts can be so brazen, absolute god complexes out of their depth, only in it for the money, acting like they're a minisanji. The worse thing also is the talents themselves often being inexperienced and/or afraid to speak up, or having not properly read their contracts, and stay stuck or left holding the bag when the ship eventually sinks.
I don't think you're using the word "capitalism" correctly. Capitalism is just free trade and free association, either referring to an economic system where people are free to capitalize on their returns in a trade (that is get the most money for their product or service, or get the most product or service for their money,) or a system where people are free to invest or spend their capital as they choose. No country has either, since the government is an extortion racket that takes money from people and uses it as they choose without allowing the taxpayer free association, or they threaten to fine or discipline people for engaging in trades they don't approve; for example, buying anything from someone who isn't licensed, or buying anything that is a controlled substance. Vtubers working for an agency are freely entering into an association where they exchange time and talent for money, usually in the form of some share of revenue. Being a commission (percentage) based industry, like any sales agency some people can spend a lot of labor and resources to earn little or nothing, but they do so hoping things work out well. Unfortunately, most commission based jobs often pitch returns that no one will get, which is how they are able to essentially get free labor. For example, with social media based companies, if the company doesn't do anything to drive traffic to your channel/site, then it makes it much harder, which is basically what happens with these failed agencies. They just give the talent a model, and have them do all the work.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
Oh cool! Bao talked about my tweet!
Disclaimer about my list:
1. Kawa Entertainment still exists as a merch company, but they used to be a merch company that also had a "talent owns their IP" vtuber agency like VShojo. Kawa's merch is very good, and you should buy some.
2. AkioAir had all their talents graduate in 2023, but the owner didn't announce that they were shutting down until 2024.
3. NEXAS hasn't shut down yet, and won't shut down until January 31st of 2025 but they already announced that they have.
4. Only AuroraLiveVR EN is shutting down. Their chinese branch will continue. However, ALVR EN's twitter hasn't announced their dissolution yet, but their final talent mentioned that they were shutting down when she graduated.
5. I'm certain that I missed a few agencies for sure, and a few of these are JP and ID agencies.
Would Idol count?
I gonna commandeer a reply to talk about the insane microcosm that was Yume+ and their collapse.
Yume+ debuted as a small corpo with 4 talents early 2024. They collapsed 6 months later debuting 1 extra talent 3/4 months after the others, and hosting 1 concert for the group.
The amount of BS that happened in this corp was insane. Like the one extra talent that debuted was forced into a agreement to delay her debut and made to work on assests and video editing for the rest of the girls, and was excluded from any deals made pre her debut which included Yume+ inclusion in Rift runner set 2. She was also suppose to be excluded from the concert but due to "issues" the concert has to be delayed which meant they had to add her in to not seem exclusionary. This is one of the craziest predatory contracts I've seen.
But it gets crazier cause the CEO himself ghosted the entire company cause the dude literally had no plan to run the corpo. The talents and staff took a company wide vote to oust him and dismantle the company. All talents getting to keep their IP. But also due to how thing went down the talents also have basically no NDA that will apply to them so they talked pretty openly about everything.
Like this entire situation was insane like nothing else and barely anyone saw it due to how small they were.
3 of the talents are still active under these IPs so please check them out as they are all hard working and amazing creators. Raein Clowd, Aimee, and Meru Umiko.
Hi AJ
@@BadAtPickingNamebought out by another agency
If you count it, technically the MSM talent agency collapsed this year too and they were mostly vtubers.
Sakana said that it's a sign of panic and instability when agencies debut a generation shortly after another has already debuted.
That's odd to read when thinking of Justice bring debuted not long after Advent in Hololive. Maybe have a grain on salt with that statement
@@rafaelfigfigueiredo2988 justice debuted over a year after advent that ain't fast lmao.
@@rafaelfigfigueiredo2988justice debuted 1 year after advent.
@@rafaelfigfigueiredo2988you timeskippin?
@@rafaelfigfigueiredo2988 it was over a year, it just felt REALLY quick by HoloEN standards because there was a bit longer between Myth and Council and then between Council and Advent.
What Bao said is so true. Put simply, too many startups thought they could copy the Nijisanji model of massive numbers of debuts, very quickly, when instead they should've copied the Hololive model of slowly building up a small first generation, until it's proven they're sustainable, then once that's done, you have the footing to start thinking about creating more generations.
VAllure is great example of the opposite of these failed corpo's, being openly successful, because they have a small number of talents, targeting a lazer-focused niche, & are only now starting to talk about a 2nd gen, after 6+ months of success.
Love VAllure. Also, it gives me vibes of what DCEU tried as well as a few others
The other successful strat is to copy VShojo by recruiting established talents and letting them keep their IPs even if they leave. Talents come in with an established fandom, get the managerial and marketing support they need, and then go back to being independent once their contract expires.
@firehazardentertainment8381 But people hate VShojp
@@TheMockingjay74why do people hate vshojo? Just curious. They seem to let their talents have a lot of freedom and most of them are pretty entertaining and seem like good people.
@@Professorligmasalty small indies that thought Vshojo is a clique or only gets big Vtubers.
Between the 20 companies that closed, there are 297 total Vtubers, 198 became Independant VTubers, and 99 either were fired, retired completely, or graduated. That's crazy!
A 3rd of them being wiped out is insane
V reverie folded but Salmon Lordette and Ranna Ianna managed to get back the rights to the characters recently thankfully.
-IF ONLY RETIRED HOLOMEMS COULD DO THAT-
They could @@gamerguy425but at the same time they prefer not to do it because the whole process to do so is already a pain in the mind....and uh,also because "this" and "that" happened for certain..ahem, "retired streamers"
@@abimaelesparza5301 I don't really understand what you're talking about in the last part. Are you referring to the ones that ended from more dark circumstances like Hitomi Chris, Aloe and Rushia?
Thank you, Bao. My agency exploded this year and hearing someone finally telling the public the behind the scenes details we can’t talk about ourselves is giving me so much courage. I appreciate you. 💙💙
🐺
Wise words by Bao, who has seen some of the carnage, she has been a victim of failed businesses before.
In some way this industry is like the music business used to be.
with less p diddlers hopefully
@@NinthSettlerNot with the A man around
I’ve said it on Twitter but thank you for covering this. As a person who was in the VIRTUX group, this has been crazy.
Even Hololive started with just Tokino Sora streaming to thirteen viewers. She was the lone talent for like a year and 100k subscribers (I think, I'm not positive on exact numbers) before they started adding in the rest of Gen 0.
Bao, why are you so fuckin' smart and sexy?
Yes. Cover spent years building up to where they could even be ready to start the EN branch in 2020. Even if Myth didn't pop off like they did, Hololive would have been fine because it built that reliable foundation over years. Like most booms, it will be over already if you're trend chasing.
This industry needs actual agents. Lawyers and industry experts who have a legal responsibility to represent their clients' interest and who are not producers themselves.
A vtuber guild or union. It would have to be a non-profit with any profit going into improving itself or being paid directly back to the talent.
Entrance into the guild/union would be tricky because of the high startup costs of being a vtuber.
They would pay lawyers to look over contracts and offer advice or a counter offer.
It would be great if it can reduce costs and reduce the workload for already established indie vtubers. While providing a better path and resources for people to get started vtubing.
Though privacy would have to be a major pillar of it.
@BobBigWheels A union would be a good way to make sure that producers encourage prospective talent to engage responsible agent-representatives prior to contracting, but you don't need a union or a non-profit to motivate an effective talent agency.
Problem is who's paying them? I doubt a lot of smaller vtubers earn enough to afford those services
@@bilegttsolmon6027 One thing is that if there's not much money involved, then there also shouldn't be that much at risk in the contract, so not having an agent shouldn't be a big deal. Also, for continued representation - especially when the firm or agency specializes - the real costs actually can be kind of small sometimes. Lastly, agencies can contract for continuous representation in the hopes that their clients' businesses will grow. This also incentivizes them to wean some of the field of prospects and to encourage their clients to engage with reputable and successful producers - something which those producers should love for that it keeps some other riffraff producers out of competition for the best talent.
@@bilegttsolmon6027 First I'd say, if there's not a lot of money involved, then there's probably not a lot at risk to not being represented. Secondly, I think you might be surprised at just how low the real costs of continued representation can be, especially if an agency or firm specializes (although, whether they pass on those efficiencies to their clients is another matter). Finally, a representative relationship can be contracted to be long-term, taken on by an agency in the hopes that their client will grow with time; this incentivizes the agencies to winnow the field of prospects some, and to encourage their clients towards reputable and successful producers. Good producers will love these behaviors from the agencies, as from the producers' perspective the agencies are helping them by sharing some of the prospecting burden and preventing some losses to competition from less scrupulous market spoilers - and there you've got another reason why even the producers might be inclined to encourage any prospective talent to first seek effective representation.
While some of what Bao is saying certainly applies to some of these agencies, not all of them are predatory. I'd like to provide my first-hand account with Amber Glow. I joined their support staff as a video editor in October of last year and sadly watched it die from the inside. TBH I knew it didn't have much longer when I came in, and I was hoping my videos might be able to help turn things around. But it wasn't enough. The CEO and managers really did care about the talents. Super lenient with streaming quotas, payouts were timely, did everything they could to resolve disputes between members, etc.
I do think debuting too many members too quickly was a mistake, but I don't know what was going on behind the scenes there since I joined well after the last generation debuted. And most of the former members did end up keeping their models and personas and are still streaming as indies a year later.
Debuting new gen is certainly a marketing tactic, its like trying to show that agency is "thriving" when of course that gamble doesnt always pay off
I’m glad Bao talked about this, it is constantly being talked about by the newstubers but it gets lost in the day by day and taken for granted. Bao talking about it highlights the human element and people suffering but also how big of a systemic issue it is.
there are 3 big agencies where most people would say they are really good
1. hololive
2. vshojo
3. phase connect
And for male vtubers, we have one good option: First Stage Production, since Phase has stated they'll never hire male talents and Holostars is proving to be a worse place for male talents than even Kurosanji.
Heck, even to this day, Niji is still the only large vtuber agency where a man has anything resembling equal opportunity. Even if that means unethical managment.
Their audience is the only audience of a co-ed agency that lacks the type of fan who hate male vtubers, which makes a HUGE difference in whether a man has a chance.
Sadly, they still have a monopoly on the audience that actually likes and supports male vtubers.
We need more agencies to take away Niji's stranglehold on male vtuber opportunity.
All of them share a basic philosophy of slow, steady growth and high quality.
Phase Connect isnt that big, thats because their owner Sakana isnt blinded by greed and hasnt gone public.
The popularity & pull with the last one seems a little mismatched with the other two lmao
The way niji dropped from the lineup
I watched VReverie's descent in real time. Followed my favorite indie there after she graduated. Emotional rollercoaster aside, it sucked to see her come back like a year later and some people be really shitty like, "I thought you graduated, why are you back."
She wasn't even really able to talk about it bc of nda.
I am glad she's back to thriving as of now.
I do wish we could have more companies that actually care about thier talents. I look forward to the day when we hopefully do
I do hope furi furntail gets ownership back of her channel and character considering she played a big part in her creation and design. If by some miracle all the ex talents get their old corpo ip back even if they don't end up using them I'd be happy to see the characters effectively back home where they belong.
@@christopherpage2622 Certain ex talents will never get that IP back and one has stated she has no plans to even look into it. The only 1 that MIGHT is Bri, as she stated on her alt twitter account that she is getting a lawyer to go over their contract. Umi and the ones that joined a new corpo are not interested in even getting them back as they rather put that behind them
OP what's the talent? you sold me. be vague if you must.
@@CillmaCuvas well she was a certain pink fox, but now she's back to being her fairy bunny self. She's also been a vtuber rigger for many years if that helps
@@christopherpage2622 I absolutely agree, they definitely do all deserve their ip back. Sucks having to see someone who rigged their own model not be allowed to still use it or really be able to have it under their portfolio.
After you put so much effort into building a character too, there's really no one else they should belong with than the talent.
buncha business fools thought they smelled quick cash, wanted to get rich quick, opened a vtuber agency thinking they could exploit basically free labor... folded, rip.
It's trendy, happens all the time with every niche that pops up. Blech.
Reminds of machinima and their insane contracts.
We call 'em vampire capitalists for a reason.
Whats crazy was EIEN was working pretty well until just one member left for health reasons, barely a month later they announce closure
Idol was so close to , but it had dedicated staff and the company forged ties with Brave leading to Brave taking it over. Idol also has a loyal fanbase that thanks to Kai they engage weekly with.
The way Idol and Brave happened was about as good as it can be.
Letting talent opt out of the merge and go indie, with all the IP that the talent put 90% of the effort in to build the brand in the first place. Rin can still be Rin, and the main cost is one year of revenue share, and that is amazing.
@@OriginalPiMan Yea say what you want about Aviel (Old Ceo) at least before he bailed he gave Idol another chance. Aviels networking really saved Idol in the end
The problem with Idol prior to Brave buying them, was that Aviel went too hard on "paying the talents a fair rate", vtubers in corpos do deserve to be paid but you can't give them such a large cut of the money because you start losing money. Idol was very much on the edge of funds running dry.
@@OriginalPiMan Even better the former members I think are still free to collab with people who stayed at Idol.
Idol lost all of e-sakai ultimately but I am glad they handled the merger well, were transparent about it to fans and saved the company
Production kawaii and Prism project where actually pretty big, crazy to see them shut down, but bao said it best.
gunrun has the opportunity to get the funniest blackjack ever
waiting for gunrun to do something funny next year
I still think that if Production kawaii hadn't "merged" or sold to Culture Entertainment they would still be around today. The core people behind kawaii were dedicated to what they were doing.. I think CE were just looking at the money side of things and decided to cut their costs and fold up shop. It's especially sad because I think things were starting to turn around for them. I disagree with some of Bao's closing statements here.. About NONE of them understanding content creation. PRISM and Production kawaii both gave the IPs to the talents. Probably the outliers in this situation.. but I feel like those two companies especially shouldn't be lumped in with the rest.
I had super high hopes for Prism 🥹
The way I see it, most of these are outfits that shouldn't have existed in the first place. So many vtuber corps seem to be run by clueless people who simply want to make money, and have no real capacity to actually bolster their talents.
So in the end, this is exactly what needed to happen.
Consolidation of top talent into a handful of companies that are actually serious.
This is what the industry should be.
That said, the loss of kawaii is a blow to us all since they clearly were such a company.
Agreed. From what has been described, talents and the staff that worked with them were still dedicated at PK, but people who were "higher up" weren't. I had forgotten that there had been that deal before. It's pretty similar to how things ended for Prism. They joined with Sony and things were going fine until Sony decided it wasn't interested in vtubers, most likely because any profits would be small.
One other that I think was similar was Project Kavvai. Air Malaysia started that at a time when there was basically no air travel, so it was probably more of an advertisement thing, or some kind of investment that the higher ups decided they didn't need anymore when business picked up again.
Kawaii burned all the goodwill they had by slandering Gen 3 with lies about them supposedly “being lazy and difficult to work with”.
Gen 3 BTW ended up creating their own agency that you might have heard of: V-Dere.
@@CJODell12 yeah, they mismanaged it, first by ignoring the conflict that was festering in the gen, and then they thought they could return to BAU of not doing anything after not doing anything for so long. They lost 2 of their 3 best performing talents and lost the momentum, thanks to management being full of hubris. Sadly, this is a symptom of other companies too, we saw it in Nijisanji, even though they have not failed yet (due to their size I believe) etc.
As Bao kept talking, everything she said kept going through my brain as " how to VShojo" ... it's silly to me how I see company after company fall into the trap of making a company in the JPN mold for the En audience - Yeah, a lot of VTuber fans are Japanophiles, but that doesn't mean that the idol model is right for the EN market.
at the same time, much of what she's talking about is stuff yagoo's specifically called out to short-sighted investors when they tried to push accelerating the rate of debuts.
and nijisanji's rapid debuts is not only contributing to en's problems, but it's also starting to show signs of stressing their jp side as well. their jp revenues are increasing, but their live stream revenues didn't increase proportional to their streamer count increase, and that's a pretty good hint they're stretching themselves thin.
While Hololive isn't without their issues, I don't think the English market cares for the idol culture as much as JP does. We're here more for the personalities and streams, the idol stuff is secondary. We only enjoy and buy tickets for the concerts and merch because we enjoy the talents so much.
Gunrun has a LOT of experience and a good chunk of money to invest and pretty much only made deals with vtubers with an existing large fanbase. This can't easily be copied
@@autohmaeTo an extent, but most of VShojo’s expansions have been fuelled by poaching the best talents from Nijisanji’s slow collapse. While there may only be one Niji, most of the recently collapsed agencies are Niji copycats, which means there’s a large pool of proven talents for a VSJ copycat to pull from.
@@Jerdifier not a bad reasoning, it might be true.
"Not everyone can be YAGOO".
I think a lot of people is unaware that Tanigo started as a regular employee at Sanrio, after he got enough experience he started his own company producing electronics which He SOLD and used the money to found the technology company that would be parent to Hololive. They even still have like two games on steam.
It was because they were toying with the technology and looking into how to showcase it that Sora and A-Chan with their proposal of using it for doing streaming and Idol activities was the seed that started the idea of moving into that direction, and with his experience he decided to take the chance and try it as a venture which he already was able to navigate from his experience prior.
People who doesn't have business experience and doesn't understand content creation is going to have expectations that don't align with the reality of the Vtubing landscape.
It's not about competing with Holo or other agencies, it's about growing the business and supporting the talents so that their work becomes profitable and their brand grows organically.
Which is far from being a "fast" or "easy" money making scheme.
But the important part is the experience, without proper business experience it's not possible to have a successful company, regardless of what the company produces.
And not everyone can be Sakana either, that dude's company almost folded in the first month of Phase Origin debut.
Which is quite funny as it could go down in history as the fastest bankrupted Vtuber company LOL, dood
The worst part of this is the CEOs will get out of this unscathed while vtubers will get damaged hard.
yeah honestly... It sucks for the Vtubers who ended up in debt cos they upgraded their equipment in hopes of streaming better only to lose their company backing and struggling to market themselves as Indies
This is an important thing to remember, especially on a day like the Vtuber Awards.
I think the reasons agencies keep pushing out vtubers are because:
1. They see each model as a cash cow generating profit. Like there's an initial investment in terms of rigging and hiring costs but then these vtubers will start generating monthly profit. The more vtubers you have the more subs/supas/ad revenue you get every month.
2. They want hit on that big time hit, like Pipkin Pippa for Phase Connect or Rin Penrose for Idol. Having one talent blow can generate so much revenue for the company.
Just keep pulling until you get a Gura.
@@Xickhololive had a few people blow up before gura even debuted - fubuki had a million subs on her bilibili before gura even debuted, and kiryu coco and korone also had over half a million subs each on youtube by then. gura obviously blast them out of the water by going viral in the west, but hololive by no means was without existing hits at her debut.
@@dead-claudiaHololive has a few unicorns that really bring in the big bucks, aside from gura and those listed. There's Susei, Marine, Calli, etc... People pay to see their concerts and regularly watch/listen to music and MVs.
@@dead-claudia I don't mean to diminish those accomplishments. But I do think Gura's success was the one that motivated the most get-rich-quick start-ups.
It's not enough to get that one big hit. Phase now has multiple 4 views talents, carefully managing your talent is way more important.
I was just reading about P. Kawaii yesterday to know what happened to the members, even graduated ones and this is crazy, at least they could keep their models. But it also feels there's as many agencies showing up recently.
I think last week a new one with 8 members just debuted. It really feels like that, they just want to see if any talent sticks.
Even worse, after being just debuted what some of them talked about was how they wanted more waves, to be "senpai" and while I get that it's fine to want success for the company and see it grow... dude you just debuted a whole gen....
Yeah, I know the one. It can be tough having too few since it adds pressure to perform, but that is a lot of upfront cost.
Sometimes, i forget that Bao is actually a good business person because of her experiences. Our whale got those brain wrinkles frfr
We all like to give Bao shit because she's goofy and can be cringe af sometimes. It's easy to forget she's smart with an amazing business sense.
I called it with Production Kawaii, the 3rd gen suddenly leaving and forming their own agency was a clear sign of problems
Biggest rule of thumb when you're doing a vtuber agency: never exert yourself to the point it impacts upon you or your talents fatally.
As seen with many small vtuber agencies, they try to reach & gonble up the biggest of things to expand ASAP but by doing so, they add more pressure & strife to their vtubers to the point they hecome absolutely drained or just graduate too.
The CEOs of these agencies try to be Yagoo & GunRun from Hololive & Vshojo respectively but ultimately, *they fly too close to the Sun & die.*
To quote Harry Callahan: Man’s got to know his limitations.
I know Bao's been around as a content creator for a long time, but it's always surprising to me when she addresses the VTuber industry with so much knowledge, maybe it's the way she expresses her thoughts so clearly, and she's so down-to-earth too. I really admire this silly whale ngl.
agencies will never do that, for the same reason why streaming services won't renew past 5 seasons and often cancel by the 2nd (while simultaneously greenlighting all other new shows).
debuts drag in the most new viewers, and the business model, based on partners and sponsorships, values these viewers the most. sponsors want as wide of a reach as possible, so they want to see as many new viewers (representing growth and projected growth).
they assume that old viewers will be retained (tho tbh sponsors wouldn't really care even if they left), and there's no profit (growth) in improving the experience for old viewers anyway. spending money to retain the same audience is technically a loss for the agency and completely irrelevant to sponsors.
ultimately agencies are companies, and companies are profit-driven institutions. there job is not to cultivate an industry, but to make the most profit (which we assume in the free market cultivates an industry). unless you make some sort of co-op vtuber agency, there's no way to avoid this.
also, Japanese vtuber agencies are literally just 360 deals (in music). you give up your IP in exchange for getting some funding/capital. it's unimaginable in every other industry (imagine if scientific theories were named after the company that funded the scientist rather than the scientist), but in entertainment it's the norm lmao.
CEO's and not thinking short term, challenge impossible.
Also bao is so right about this and knowledgeable. I feel there's definitely something to be gained if expert vtubers would create like, idk, a union or expert center to share this kinda stuff with newbies. I'm thinking of the ladies that really know their stuff about business such as bao, lily, geega and others.
Also, Project F (Foundation) barely missed being included in this year's list by being 4 days early...
Ah yes, the iPhone approach to Generations. But with Vtubers
This happens in all new niches. There is a race for power, with most people flaming out very quickly.
All of these agency failures were inevitable if vtubing was profitable, so all the failures is a good thing for vtubing. Ideally, we want to get to a point where agencies aren't a thing anymore, and it is slowly going in that direction. I'm optimistic that this method of streaming will be popular for a very long time.
at the very least, mythic and vshojo won't be in a world of pain. cover corp is a unicorn rn, but my concern is a few ceos down the line, they're gonna have similar issues to what the motown music industry suffered in the 60s with their 360 deals destroying their talent while also causing revenues to plummet. bc it's this that these vtuber agencies are seemingly running into.
This is the appeal of Bao in specific, and Vtubers in general: Because of the medium, they can be unhinged and raw in ways most streamers can't, but at the same time, they are highly talented people with areas of interest and expertise, so in the same individual, you can get hysterical screeching begging for a wolfman to give them puppies and a masterclass in the current state of media agencies.
Vtuber Agencies are just rebranded Multi-Channel Networks.
wait a second this isn't M0istcritikal
that title fooled me as well
And also Bao is actually acting.....hinged.
are you sure it's not? looks like charlie to me
@@ElPerverto6no i think bao is actually somehow hinged here.
@@dead-claudia That's what I meant to say. Poor choice of words on my part. She actually acts like a normal person for once.
I don't know what to feel aboutthat.
This reminds me that earlier this year I looked into an agency for vtubers that was starting to accept auditions and found some worrying stuff. Note that this agency isn't on the list you showed here, because they haven't yet debuted a single talent from those auditions and haven't disbanded.
At first, all I'd found was that the founder of the agency had a nearly decade-long history of trying a project, then quitting when it didn't get successful within a few weeks. I gave up at that point, as I'd learned all I needed to know, but later on the almighty algorithm 'blessed' me with some cursed knowledge. The owner had actually founded a previous agency, hired a single vtuber to be the mascot, then disbanded and fired that vtuber before rebranding the entire agency despite never even debuting that mascot-vtuber.
This only got worse from there though because while looking into it further, I found that the agency is claiming they have never hired a single talent, yet I have proof they hired exactly one (their mascot vtuber). And I mean, that's kinda technically true. The old name hired that vtuber, not the new name, but it was the same founder and he just rebranded instead of dissolving the agency (their own webpage even states it was a rebrand, not a full dissolution). So far as I'm concerned, they're basically the same agency.
Additionally, I did find people who claimed to have auditioned for that previous agency and they all had pretty universal negatives about the interview process, though they provided no proof they ever auditioned so I'm taking their negatives with a pound of salt.
What really kinda annoys me though is the reason I'd heard of this agency was because another big name vtuber I followed at the time retweeted their audition announcement. And I'm not mad at them for doing it, but I am kinda disappointed that they did that, since it might have lead to a lot of vtubers applying for what I'm worried will be another name on the list of failed agencies for 2025.
I remember when Jocat first revealed his vtuber model, he tweeted about forming a vtuber agency with a second generation debuting about 3 months after the first, only to tweet the next day that the agency was shutting down. He later had to clarify that this all was a joke, because it wasn’t unrealistic enough from reality
Such an insightful clip. I think Bao hit the nail on head with her rant. These CEOs and managers totally didn't understand content creation at all. The CEOs and investors had the capital. They figured that the Vtubers would be their content creation "experts" and hired them to do ALL the content creation. But they didn't understand the industry of content at all, most of these young boys and girls they interviewed and accepted are young, fresh content creators who had not made it big on the internet, and don't really know how to really get their content viral.
So these young talents really needed more coaching, support and advice from the management in order to grow their brand. So when the management themselves had no idea how to publicise themselves, they are stuck in a rut. The only strategy they could obviously see was from companies like Niji, who on the surface are successful, but we all know how much their talents are actually struggling with the lack of support.
"You're not gonna be Yagoo bro" SAY IT LOUDER
Bao, this is part of the reason why you're one of my Oshis! Please never stop being you, we love you!
*My friend and I were scouted by an agency. Won’t say which one, but it’s a BIG one. We turned them down, because I justifiably have trust issues. We’re fine with our current publisher, that lets us do whatever we want* 😈
Joe is a Great Manager! And his company is so Good to us! 💙
the model is going to have to evolve like that into providing services *for* creators instead of owning them, it's all just Machinima/MCNs again
you know, bao is actually right about CEOs being narcissists. most of the rich and powerful people are narcissists or even psychopaths (outdated term but more recognizable) and it's almost necessary. a normal person doesn't have the interest nor the ability to abuse their employees like that solely for their own profit
Bao making sense is always an amazing experience
Honestly, everything she's saying is true. From a marketing perspective, it's a really good way to grow. It's better to get 1,000 dedicated fans who'll for sure buy your merch cuz they connect with your brand that much than 5,000 fans who have a 30/70 chance to buy/not buy, respectively. Developing brand identity is like day 1 stuff so if a manager isn't understanding that, I highly doubt that persons competency as a manager.
It's really sad that people get preyed upon like this. If you're given a contract, look over it with a lawyer. Take a copy home and really read and understand it. I cannot stress that enough because there are assholes in the world who'll take advantage of you. Don't fall prey to their tricks. Approach everything with a clear head and if you don't feel you have a clear head, DO NOT SIGN.
So there's a thing in the trucking world we called operating authority
Most vTubers are operating under someone else's authority and so they don't own their own thing
That's why Independent operators have their own authority
Respect the talents. Something many investors don't even care to try to understand.
One video for investors i watched, he called vtuber watchers people that would watch Joe Rogan or whatever. Very rude, zero Respect for fans, no understanding of vtubers, devoid of soul.
@@Speed001investors will happily disrespect themselves just to chase a quick buck. expecting them to respect others is like expecting a car to move by asking it to move. sure, it might if someone's making it move, but they don't normally move on their own accord.
VReverie looked like it was gonna take off like Idol Corp. Cheri and Ophelia by themselves were amazing but the other talents were great as well.
I think that agency went down by incompetence. They had good talents, and good models and style too.
I am officially asking for all of Bao's opinions so she never has to put up with "nobody asked" ever again
Each Release of Vtubers is like opening a Vtuber Booster Pack to these CEO's 😂
"C'mon Ultra Rare-!!! "
I think basing your business off of a niche subculture is kinda like break dancing on a tightrope with no safety and a lot of them fall because of how businesses function sadly
God she was popping the f off with this. BANGER AFTER BANGER.
I’m hoping to eventually start content creation after I get some of my shit together. Maybe do V-tubing but not sure yet. This has been an interesting perspective to look at into the business side of being a V-tuber.
Wow. The stuff you can learn in one video. Thank you Ms. Bao for not just reacting, but providing more background on the subject. (its a refreshing change from big news)
Bao talking like a grizzled veteran who's been through war.
Sounds like Bao is ready to seize the means of production.
Honestly this is just modern startup culture mixed with the unrealistic expectation of growth that plagues current day corporate America.
Also spot on about most CEOs being narcissistic. The only humble CEOs I've ever seen are people who started from nothing and/or grew into this positions naturally. Those who seek to be CEOs are almost always selfish and full of themselves.
Funny things is, Sakana initially is kinda like those "snob" CEO except he is actually passionate about vtubing.
Then Pippa had enough of how Sakana treated them like crap.
And before Sakana know it, Pippa already brought entire Phase Origin to openly revolt against Sakana.
This event actually gave Sakana a cold hard reality check and became a better CEO because of that, dood.
Thank you for talking about this Bao!
I was one of the very lucky ones who were able to buy out my IP, but it feels... weird... to use it, so I prefer not to.
I poured my everything into that character for over a year, but that's it. I felt like I was the only one pushing to get myself out there, yanno? And I'm sure my whole gen felt the same.
The saddest part is when you lose that and people don't want to associate with you anymore because you're no longer corpo.
I've learned the people why liked me for my corpo name and not me were never my friends to begin with, but it still stings, man.
But I still want to hold out hope there're good corpos out there.
Bao is an authority on getting screwed over…
I almost forgot the Bao that barks for wolfmen.
jokes aside Bao's right about agencies pushing gens.
There are some on that list that are easy to forget because this has been ongoing through the whole year. I am surprised to se AOI ID on there just because I lost track of them in 2021 when they had a whole gen graduate on one day.
I wonder how many of them were debating closure, and seeing simlar companirs close made them admit that the bubble was over and it was going to be a slow climbe now.
Bao don't forget that MSM talent disbanded this year too. Thanks for posting this
I never comment on this stuff, but man, it's fucking hilarious to me how as soon as Hololive began to exist, suddenly you have all these companies seeing dollar signs, and they don't really understand, or I guess they aren't interested in, creating value, they're more interested in essentially pump-and-dumping the Vtuber space. So they snatch up some venture funding, they pay some upfront graphic design costs, and they hit social media in the fandom space where they know they can quickly onboard a bunch of girls and guys who all fell into Vtuber fandom and probably fantasized about themselves getting into Hololive or Nijisanji or something so they could know what it feels like to be popular and have lots of superchats and 5000 people watching them. But none of these people have proven anything, they just want the result. The companies don't care, they just need someone to put onscreen because in their minds, as long as they're backing some streamers, those streamers will blow up. And they're banking on the fact that if they onboard and shove out 100 streamers in a year, one of them will be cool enough to make the money back, and possibly lift the rest up.
But streaming doesn't work like that. There's so, so, so many people on Twitch toiling in the 10 viewer range, great personalities and people, probably have the chops to make it, but they likely never will. Blowing up and being a huge success is so much of a narrow window to hit that 99.9% will never get there. But the companies are just in it because they see that this space is growing and they hope that when the chips fall and things settle out, they're one of the ones still standing.
you say this as if nijisanji wasn't literally one of those companies. they just had a ceo smart enough to not overextend early. but that latest statement makes me suspect riku might be getting ready to overextend the jp side
@@dead-claudiawas it Riku who didn't overextend early on?
@@dead-claudia I don't think that's true, since from what I understand they were pretty full with Japanese streamers long before they branched out to English after Hololive. The difference is back then they clearly were just a small company focusing on facilitating small streamers having access to each other for collabs and stuff. But when they started bulking their roster on both sides of the language spectrum, they also bulked staff and production costs and tried to oversell their streamers that were ostensibly fine but being massively fucked by costs and contracts behind the scenes. They got a taste for bigger money and they just hit the gas too much and didn't care about the well-being or support behind the scenes because their roster was, I suppose, in their mind big enough to handle the churn (it wasn't).
So basically, these companies are trying what Warmer Brothers did with the DCEU and failing even harder than that did.
Seems like we're indeed in the era of market boom in the industry. There will be more of vtuber agencies getting blown outta the water next year. It'll take a couple years at least for the industry to stabelize and we see the titans of the segment. There's at least two of them already quite established and stable (VShojo and Hololive), so let's see who's gonna be the next one to actually stabilize itself and build presence enough to rival the other two.
Vtubers are a niche and then idol vtubers are another niche within a niche, it takes a lot of strategy and patience to make it work.
i think the shotgun approach they all take is trying to catch lightning in a bottle, like a gura, like iron mouse even some niji boys. THing is, you cant really do that.
Yup, for every Gura or Ironmouse, there's dozens (maybe hundreds) of mediocre vtubers who can only pull 30 viewers on a good day and are unlikely to ever improve significantly. (Though, to be fair, I follow one like that and she says vtubing isn't her life, it isn't her main source of income. She does it for fun and is completely happy with having 10-15 viewers most days. She likes to know each regular individually and couldn't do that if she had thousands of people in her chat.)
@1:29 my description of Hollywood in general.
Bao could be a vtuber agency consultant.
she's got experience and knows what works and what doesn't.
although i think it would probably take a lot of time away from her streaming
Knowing how it works doesn’t make u necessary capable
@met5694 anyone can be capable as a consultant tho, it's not a high skill job
@@KynneloVyskenon Not inherently, consultants are people with experience. Bao has none with agencies
Didn't even hololive say that they now want to focus more on their existing vtubers and reduce new gens for now.
Absolutely agreed. Not everything can be scaled up with wild abandon, and not everything that can be scaled up should be.
I must point out that most of this sadly doesn't apply to male vtubers.
Without agency backing, its nearly impossible for us to gain any exposure and visibility.
The majority of successful male indies are those who already built a large audience elsewhere BEFORE becoming a vtuber. And even then, they lost a portion of that fanbase when becoming a vtuber because a large chunk of the wider audience are off-put by vtuber avatars.
On top of that, the vast majority of the pre-existing vtuber audience are either apathetic, disinterested, or outright dislike male vtubers.
Being a non-established indie male vtuber is like being a homeless person performing in a street corner for pennies and nickels.
Once in a blue moon, one will get lucky enough to receive some solid dollars or be scouted by someone with the influence to reward a man on his merits and talents. But its an extreme rarity.
The majority have to perform and beg for scraps and crumbs.
We men really have no other choice but to look for shelter at an agency, in order to have anything close to a chance of our merits being seen instead of being held back based on our biology.
Especially those of us who don't do BFE or fujo-bait.
Agreed, not to mention: Unless if you’re doing this for fun, expect the harsh reality that comes with being a small indie male VTuber.
It's not "because I'm male". It's your SOCIAL ABILITY. Put the money in for a quality mic and a model with good facial tracking and expressive toggles. Actually put emotion into your speech. Remember to use your toggles. Remember to be expressive. Pay for classes if you struggle with that, and improve. Stream games that allow you to talk with your chat while you play. Learn how to multi-task. Make friends with other streamers behind the scenes. CURATE AND MAINTAIN A SANITIZED SOCIAL MEDIA, OR FIND AN ECHO CHAMBER AND CURATE TO THEM. Actually market yourself. Understand that twitch and youtube are saturated and that viewership and money are not going to fall into your lap.
Study incel retoric as a HOW NOT TO BEHAVE and WHAT NOT TO TYPE OR SAY. Because complaining about how hard it is for your gender complained to other genders instantly clocks as incel rhetoric even if it isn't your intention.
There are PLENTY of 4-view streamers with a wide variety of gender expression. Complaining how tough it is gets you nowhere; it makes you look bad. The entertainment industry is all about how you are percieved. Go to college or get a job if you can't handle the stress and difficulty, and understand that jobs that make a lot of money are socially, psychologically, and physically draining too.
Man Bao really is one of the best ❤
Honestly, the more I think about the perception I have on the Vtuber Agencies, are basically like what Multi-Channel Networks used to be like back in the day (examples such as Machinima, Maker Studios, and Fullscreen), but with extra steps. Extra steps such as a new persona, although some of those agencies adapt the way of debuting established talents within the Vtubing scene (such as Vshojo) as part of the company.
They are probably thinking "If one of these characters takes off, I can make bank off merch and media rights. Hopefully that happens before I run out of investors. If not, I move on to the next racket."
out of all 20 of those agencies, i have heard of literally 0 of them. and im sad to see that niji sanji isnt on that list.
Give Nijisanji like 5 years, perhaps it will folded like the rest of those 20 companies, dood
@@dood52751 they dont deserve that long
Sadly most of these agencies pop up just to scam streamers and end up shutting down. The fact that 20 agencies shut down this year and no one has heard of them is nuts.
Thank you for giving me a good insight on the dark reality of VTuber agencies and how it can go wrong. All that hard work just gone if the company falls apart, like damn.
20? Thats quite a good amount of them
They only care about how much money they can make off the VTubers on debut/who pops off on their own, defeating the primary reason to join these agencies.
Luckily, some agencies were humane on the way out. Production Kawaii gave their talent the IP on the way out, as I believe Prism did. The newest generation before they went out if business, Euphemeria (sp?) have banded together as indies as an informal group.
Fauna's graduation is still one of the most absolutely shocking and unexpected ones in vtuber history to me, she seemed like one of the top 3 I'd think would be staying there since she loves being, loves her character and idol and loved all her fellow talents. How could they not find some kind of solution or compromise?
I also had like 3 of my first and favorite vtubers graduate in one year (or announce it) between Amano Serafi, Amelia Watson, and Fauna
CEO just reads to me as "guy that collects money and leaves" these days
reminds me of 2 of my friends who were corpo Vtubers before, it was super early in the ENVtuber market and there agencies had eather no real plan of where to go with it or wanted to branch out to a different region, one was still stuck in there contract and the other could just rebuild there community not that long ago after there graduation, luckely for both of them, we were all realy close and we knew what was going on and where we could find them and promoted them to others who might not get the hint who these new Vtubers were, heck, one of them even could almost keep there model but in the last sec the company said no and they had to think of a redesign, are they as successfull as they were as corpos? no, but there current communitys are loyal to them and that's what counts.
Technically not a Vtuber corp, but we can add MSM Talent to that list too.
Finding them again is true. I had to have people spell it out for me when the subtle hinting goes over my head. Hell I never know someone I had once followed was them! It took a random collab with a group I shrugged off, to realize their voice.
The situation is so bad it blew away the baowaves so she could have a thought
In Japanese, "eien" means "eternity". Well, about that... XD
Bao talking about the crazy vtuber agency situation is crazy
I loved Prism. I'm glad most of the people in Prism are still chugging along like they were before. At least, from my limited point of view.
Vertex is the group formed by Jack-O to oppose alliance 🦅
Thanks for giving your perspective on the situation. Unfortunately making any kind of living in arts and entertainment right now has gotten so shaky I'm sure this will all get worse before it gets better. Not least of which because there seem to be something between 20-200+ debuts on the slate (worldwide) in the coming months...
I watched this video right before the Vtuber awards and... felt bad for Ceres Fauna who immediately got two awards. I'm sure there were viewers that got introduced to her for the first time and will now buy merch or otherwise throw hololive some money between now and her graduation as a result. One really has to wonder what percentage of those proceeds she'll ever see, if any.
I want to see Bao make a vtu er agency, not because it's easy but because I believe she could actually do it. She's familiar with the game and has great potential.
Bao is based as fuck for goin off like this and putting her voice out there
The Charlie titling is spreading like wildfire throughout any space on RUclips lol
That list doesn't include Idol, which was failing and then bought out.
At least Flavr is going strong.
Sad to see v-tubers give EVERYTHING they are/have to these "companies" for just a promise of something better.
joining a startup vtuber agency is such a massive gamble.
feel bad for all the people out there that got roped into these with the idea that they are all 'corpo' and of equal value to Hololive or Nijisanji....
it's like comparing a random tech startup with Google or Apple.
i do hope some 'mid tier' agencys can flourish. but theyll really need to be run like a well oiled machine & not just hoping theyll immediately become Hololive in under a year.
ironically nijisanji's starting to run into issues for this very reason. they're trying to beat hololive in a market that's inherently driven not by pure competition, but by a mix of cooperation and competition. it's a market where everyone is racing to stand on each other's shoulders and share a slice of their pie, not a market where you can reliably slice up that pie (exception: most bfe/gfe).
@@dead-claudia
Nijisanji has a failure in how they decided to rapidly expand beyond what they could handle (creating and promptly shutting down all their external branches... EN is most likely next).
Nijisanji JP however is thriving just as much as Hololive JP. Cus that's their flagship that they actually care about.
New Startup Vtuber Agency's however... the goal should be just to SURVIVE at all. Not even for competing or sharing an existing pie. Ya gotta become the pan itself. A complete foundation that'll make you reliable enough to ACTUALLY compete.
This is why Vshojo still exists, cus they hired established talent. And just as useful, letting go of talent that didn't want to be there.
The perfect setup though is Established Talent + New Trainees. That way you can become recognizable, but also mold a next generation from the previous experience.... And with how many contracts are ending recently, I wonder if any new Agency's will take up that challenge.
Everyone wants to become the next vShojo and sign the next ironmouse and reap the benefits
Seeing some of these smaller/mid sized corpos that imploded from shitty management is really frustrating, because the way some leadership acts can be so brazen, absolute god complexes out of their depth, only in it for the money, acting like they're a minisanji. The worse thing also is the talents themselves often being inexperienced and/or afraid to speak up, or having not properly read their contracts, and stay stuck or left holding the bag when the ship eventually sinks.
6:00 edit:onward capitalism kills vtubers
as it does everything
Capitalism isn't a excuse for shitty behavior.
@@zerotwo7319 but it is a system that rewards such behavior
I don't think you're using the word "capitalism" correctly. Capitalism is just free trade and free association, either referring to an economic system where people are free to capitalize on their returns in a trade (that is get the most money for their product or service, or get the most product or service for their money,) or a system where people are free to invest or spend their capital as they choose. No country has either, since the government is an extortion racket that takes money from people and uses it as they choose without allowing the taxpayer free association, or they threaten to fine or discipline people for engaging in trades they don't approve; for example, buying anything from someone who isn't licensed, or buying anything that is a controlled substance.
Vtubers working for an agency are freely entering into an association where they exchange time and talent for money, usually in the form of some share of revenue. Being a commission (percentage) based industry, like any sales agency some people can spend a lot of labor and resources to earn little or nothing, but they do so hoping things work out well. Unfortunately, most commission based jobs often pitch returns that no one will get, which is how they are able to essentially get free labor. For example, with social media based companies, if the company doesn't do anything to drive traffic to your channel/site, then it makes it much harder, which is basically what happens with these failed agencies. They just give the talent a model, and have them do all the work.
@@litigioussociety4249 no, you are mistaking commerce for capitalism