Is the Virtual Celebrity Industry Still on the Rise in 2020?

Virtual celebrity landscape update & analysis

Last year, we witnessed the virtual celebrity trend starting to bloom. As 2020 arrived, we want to share with you some updates about how the industry is doing so far.

Who is still growing fast and what is their secret in growth? Is YouTube still the only platform going strong? Which talent agencies are thriving? For those who haven’t read the previous postings, check them out to better understand this article.

Edit(Aug 24th, 2020): Along with the researches, we finally released an avatar video-chat/streaming app for potential VTubers! Currently, the app, Hyprmeet, is free to download as a beta app so check it out and let us how you think.

It contains a built-in avatar customizing tool, a virtual webcam feature for streaming/video call software such as OBS, and our real-time facial mocap technology. We are planning to add more features such as VRoid 3D model support, button-triggered animation, etc. so stay tuned!

Is the Virtual Celebrity Industry Still on the Rise?

To put it simply, YES. We have found evidence that the industry is still on the rise. The total views of related videos and VTuber subscribers have constantly been increasing throughout 2019. In 2019, the number of total subscribers and the total views each increased by 28% and 99%.

Note that the growth rate for each channel has been consistently positive for the entire year. As the graph is solely based on YouTube ranking, we believe that the growth is faster considering other rapidly growing channels such as Bilibili and Weibo.

Growing Virtual Celebrity Community

More rookie virtual celebrities are gaining popularity resulting in an increased number of celebrities with more than 100K subscribers. As of Dec 31st, 2019, our updated landscape map includes 170 celebrities compared to the previous one with 112.

Created by team Hyprsense by listing up and gathering subscriber information. Each circle of the channels is relative to the number of subscribers.

While some are China-based new foundings, the majority are ones that just reached 100K in four months, located in the 100–200K section. This indicates that the virtual celebrity community is growing stronger from the bottom.

About half of the celebrities (54 out of 112) have marked more than 20% growth compared to four months ago among the 112 channels that were previously on our radar. With 58 newly added celebrities, these rapid uprising channels make up the majority of the virtual celebrity community. Best of all, we saw many unique virtual celebrities thriving, setting all new records!

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What’s the Secret of the Growing Channels?

So how are these channels still managing to grow fast? What differs them from other virtual celebrity channels? As we stated in the previous article, the answer still seems to be in talent agencies and China-based fans. However, another trend also arose — focusing on other platforms such as TikTok.

1. Talent Agencies

Over half of the newly added channels and fast-growing channels are associated with talent agencies. Nijisanji and Hololive by themselves make up a big chunk of the share, each holding 28% and 17%. The same rule applies to the +20% growth rated channels. Among the 54 +20% growth celebrities, Nijisanji and Hololive each hold 43% and 13%.

What are they doing so differently? While researching those uprising channels, we realized that Nijisanji & Hololive associates utilize the agency system and hold collaboration streaming with other associates, introducing each other to their own fans. With similar 2D anime look and content, they seem to share the audience base, drawing their fans to become other associates’ fans with the minimum effort. This technique helps out beginner VTubers to obtain subscribers in a short amount of time.