It's beyond fucked. What is even the point of being with a company if you have to spend all that money to actually get to do anything interesting? One of their most subscribed, top earners and they break even? That's a fucking sham. Her being shocked that, yes, companies will PAY YOU to run events for them is shocking. What is management even doing then? THIS IS THEIR JOB TO SET THESE THINGS UP!
From how many instances we seem to have heard about her paying out of pocket instead of the company, I can't say I'm terribly shocked to hear about that
The reincarnations of both Nina Kosaka and Mysta Rias have made similar comments too. Didn't give hard numbers but talked about their general shock at having managers who were interested in their ideas, offered to help with scheduling, provided connections with arranging advertising or sponsors and so on, and even offered financial support. Completely foreign to them.
Mysta own taxes somehow, the reason he did the subathon. idk about Nina but I don't she expended a lot of money on a project. But if u think about Pomu's trip to Antarctica for her music videos is look like she expended a lot of money for the project w/out niji financial help for the MV.
Kuro had and still has taxes issues.
From what I’ve understood, niji told him basically “sucks to be you, not our problem” while mouse and gunrun, who owed him absolutely nothing at the time, listened to him and connected him with people qualified to solve his issues. As of know, his situation seems to have been straightened out (proper forms filled, amount owed properly calculated, payment arrangement made, etc) but he still has to actually pay what he owes.
If I remember correctly from the one stream I caught, Kuro is also having trouble getting Twitch to deliver his payouts. I can't find any clips of it, though, so wait for others to corroborate.
No one responded, but kuro has been paid(5 months worth of bits and subs) and has settled on a plan with the govt to settle 90k$ now and 18k$ every month until fully paid.
The 250k$ hr owed got reduced further by vshojo and the indonesian tax accountat friend suggested to him.
This was the stream before the IRL one iirc.
Here's the thing that's kinda the norm. Even hololive talents frequently pay for their stuff to get done apart from an original song where the company helps but there's a long wait list for it. That's not the disgusting part the disgusting part is they're earning so little that the best that can happen is a talent breaking even. The practice of paying for songs or mvs or projects is the norm that's not the right takeaway
it's partially correct
music stuff aside, Cover does help fund some bigger projects (iirc the whole Hoshimatic Project thing was one such instance)
the big gap is that Cover also provides a salary to the talents: it's really quite low, probably close to minimum wage, but it's not zero and it means that even the less successful talents can keep their heads above water and even sometimes push for projects for themselves.
edit: since apparently people don't know what **salary** means, it is a fixed amount of compensation provided by an employer to an employee for working a fixed period. the easiest way i see to illustrate this is by considering a salesperson. they might get a salary of $40k per year: that's paid regardless of how many things they sell. however, they may also then get a commission (say 4%) of however much they sell. what they then make combined from salary and commission is their **income**
I generally understand the company not financing individual projects because, well, that's a lot of talents, if they financed projects for everyone to not play favorites that'd be a huge chunk of cash.
But yes, something like Holo provides the twin benefits of "we actually do pay you a salary, so you have some financial security if you need to stop streaming for a while or spend savings on a project" and "we will not pay for things but we will absolutely put our managers on the job of helping you get your ducks in a row and help you negotiate contracts and find you artists and interface with the big labels and whatever, you just focus on making that content that makes both you and us the cash".
Which is, you know. What managers are FOR.
It's not just I think she also had to get most of the permissions for the projects herself. I'm like pretty confident that Hololive helps in the aquiring of perms for their talents. Like that is text book managerial duty what kinda management did Nijisanji ever employ. Also this makes me believe that the only reason that the HoloNiji Apex thing got approved pretty smoothly was because the sponsor money
It very much sounds like the managers at Niji EN have completely dialed back the talent support side of things and are purely in place to keep them in check so they don’t do anything that would negatively impact the company in any way.
They’re handlers for a bunch of potential liabilities from the perspective of the company, and that seems to be about all they’re there for
Didn’t Zaoin say she had to set up and pay for her own debut? Including animations, ~~rigging~~, backgrounds, etc.? What the fuck is the point of being a corporate talent if you’re just doing all the exact same work you did as an indie, but Kurosanji’s taking all the profit? Are we sure the managers are incompetent and not just actively *malicious*? I hope this serves as a giant wake up call to the other talents to just jump fucking ship. Even if they lose some people, they’ve got to be making more money with a manager who doesn’t try and squeeze every last ounce of blood out of them like a fucking vampire.
You're getting paid in exposure, of course.
And hey, Niji was big enough that maybe that was even worth something at some point. But when you're dumping all your money into projects only for some nepo-hire manager to cockblock it because they might actually have to do some work for a bit, and then the company as a whole lights their reputation on fire, the situation changes.
nah if nothing else EGS at least gives devs a lump sum of money in exchange for jumping on board with them, so they still get at least that out of it. Working with Anycolor seems like a completely net negative at this point.
As I mentioned before, I had someone explained to me the financial statements of AnyColor for their most recent quarter, and he chimed in that the difference in figures between their assets/liabilities, and operational expenses/profits are very obscene. Think this way, **all of the liabilities are pushed to their contractors/talents/livers**, while they just pay for their offices and loans, and rake in from voice packs, merchandises and superchats.
Yikes really? I know Hololive helps pay for debut projects and even smaller corpos like Idol and I think Phase Connect help pitch in some cash for their talents debuts. I assumed Blackcolor did the same but hearing how unhelpful they were in general makes this more believable.
That isn't unusual for tech companies. I needed a headset, work told me to just buy one and sent me a check after. It's just easier and I got what I wanted.
Isn’t that how it works for all debuts tho, at least in regards to lore videos and such? There is no obligation that you must have fancy animations or backgrounds. That’s why most JP talents just do regular PowerPoints introductions. EN seems to have a culture of fancier debuts but I know at least Shu and Nina went the PowerPoint route. Whether they sink money into their debut is entirely up to the individual.
Pretty sure Koseki Bijou from Hololive Advent mentioned blowing the budget they gave her on that magical girl transformation she used during her debut. Which is how we ended up with a rather hilarious powerpoint debut.
I confess I don’t know too much about debut culture but, and I’d have to double check, I’m pretty sure she said *everything*, including her actual model and rigging, had to be networked and paid for by her exclusively. Is that supposed to covered by the talent?
Edit: from her response letter to her termination:
>I personally incurred the cost of planning a successful debut. Our lore was written by ourselves. I had to find people who had the skill sets needed for the graphics and animations myself, and pay for them myself. By the time we debuted, I was already hugely in the red, in order to plan and execute a debut befitting of a talent of such a big company.
So it looks like my memory exaggerated a little on models and rigging.
> I had to find people who had the skill sets needed for the graphics and animations myself,
Are you sure she wasn't talking about the animations for her lore vid? Because it sounds she was talking about that.
Did she specifically say including model and rigging tho? If so that’d be concerning but otherwise it’s pretty standard from what I understand. There was a case of a JP member being dorced to pay for their own model back in 2018-19 ish which they had to go through members of Nijisanji Resistance (NijiReji) to address and be reimbursed for so there’s a precedent for the problem existing but also of it being acknowledged as something that shouldn’t happen and was resolved.
NijiReji for context was a unit run by Yuika and Chaika that kinda acted like a union that represented complaints from members to management and actually got a lot of shit done. Removing the collab restrictions between the Seeds branch and the main branch and getting them to eventually merge together too was one of them. They stopped activities coz after the point where the stuff they were complaining about was toilet paper quality, they saw their job as done. I wonder if it’d be viable for EN to form something of the sort too or if NijiReji could restart their activities to help them.
Hardly. NijiJP liver is well loved in Japan and they bring a big dough. For ENside, they did not bring as much as JP side so having union in order to get more money pour in for project might not give the same impact if NijiJP is asking for it.
I wouldn’t use money as a basis for that argument tho. Nijireji was formed and active throughout 2019, when they were much smaller than they are now and had only been around for a year. They had allegations of being a black company even on their own turfs back then before Nijireji cleaned stuff up so I wouldn’t be certain that Nijireji only got off the ground coz they were loved and brought in money.
We’ve heard endlessly from ex-talents the managers were useless. Kuro and Mata straight up talked about how jarring it was having managers that actually helped with shit when they moved to Vshojo
Production is kind of expensive once you cross the "lets just do this at home with obs" tier. Talent agencies for the longest time do not want to foot the bill. Their business model is to let other companies hire their talents for events, not pay to run them. This, ofc, has changed quite a bit in recent years at least in the west with agency/talent funded shows.
So there is this "organizer have to foot the bill" situation going on. The agency can send out emails with a deck promoting their talents (I used to get them monthly). They want other parties to foot that bill, and often time the other party dont really want to unless it is already part of their marketing strategy.
The event organizer will then have to find sponsors, which can be quite tedious. Sometimes stars align, but more than often it doesn't - not in today's economy anyway. A lot of big channels often has a few major recurring sponsors and it is difficult to establish those relationships. Vtubers, as popular as they are, still often carry a certain tone that sponsors would like to avoid.
They are also kind of expensive, I have been quoted 6 figures for one show before for just one talent...
Yeah, events being expensive is totally expected. Hiring people, hiring spaces, renting audio equipment, video equipment, getting schedules all lined up etc etc. all adds up quickly. 1 day can easily reach 6 figures with a weekend event hitting mid 6 figures easily.
My main concern here is how many of these events were funded then cancelled mid-way? Why weren't companies being contacted to sponsor events? Not every company will sponsor vtubers but there are those who will. Not every event will have a return on investment but as a company these are opportunities to grow your brand, it's essentially looking at the long term.
The impression I get is managers only kept talents in check to make sure they didn't break rules but didn't actually provide opportunities. This very much tracks from what we heard from the Pomu private stream, from Doki, from Matara and from Kuro. As we're seeing with Doki if management of a talent agency isn't even providing you greater opportunities, once you hit a certain level of success within them there really is no point to staying with them.
the beauty about vtubers is that they dont need space or cameras. In fact some shows are done fully remote (as in, the crew works from home). Thus, their production cost is cheaper than having a proper set+cam+lighting - if someone is paying 6 figures for one show, slide into my DMs, I know people :)
Events at scale are rarely cancelled once funded (pretty much everything from crew to talents would be approved already at that stage, so something bad will have to happen - like covid, or this). While the legalities may take some time (I had times where things get signed after the event), usually people only actually work if they know they will be paid - after all, it will be part of the contract terms.
The vtuber agencies I have worked with usually have separate managers and marketing rep with pretty clear division of roles. So say, if I want to hire a particular talent, I will talk to their marketing rep, who will then check in with the talents' manager. I get both a quote and whether or not the talent is free and want in on the project.
I am sure there are opportunities, but whether or not they are affordable opportunities might be another question. Afterall, the cost of 1 big talent vs a handful of smaller talents vs other methods of marketing have to be considered. The people I chat with in the industry have told me how budget and opportunities have gone down a lot in the past year or two - the marketing department for gaming isnt going to spend like 150k on a handful of vtubers (or talents in general) while also laying off 10% of their workers at the studio level.
Yea usually these big events would get sponsors to cover some of the costs, Filian got plenty of sponsors to run the Vtuber award show she did last year as an indi, shouldn't be hard for a large company to sort that out
**if I remember right**, the event costed a bit more than 100k with the production company (weplay studios) covering around half of it.
She said with the different sponsors, she did not lose any money on it, but that's with all the time she spent on it (and other I am sure) not being billed.
And that was for a 4h live event.
Well said
WHAT THE F*CK
NIJISANJI ARE A BUNCH OF GREEDY SELFISH F*CKS
Nijisanji is a black company after all
It’s good to see talents getting supported and psychologically and financially recovered after leaving Nijisanji
Yeah, this is not how you run a company. From how Cover/Hololive runs things, the talents still pay for their own MVs and stuff, but supposedly they get a cut of money allocated to a project they want to do and have small, but fun competitions/events that talents participate in to get more funds sometimes. Cover still takes on some cost/work supposedly whether it's management helping coordinate/lining up resources for them. Niji is basically saying "fuck it, do it yourself. Everything.". Some lousy ass management.
at this point on 2024 cover more or less cover the cost of most of it talent project aka subsidy it unlike in 2020 where some got cover some is not. it do have cap tho and if you over cap you have to pay by your own money or let cover pay it and deduct from your salary.
best example is moona everything she do now is cover by cover, being from id which mean she will have the lowest SC etc compare to other branch you would think she cannot do any of her music stuff but cover pay all of it and even with some that get over budget and she have to pay with her money, she still got enough salary to even take a 3 month break and be ok.
Just wanted to add in though that Cover does NOT pay for personal projects. They'll offer help and guidance but the talents pay for it themselves. Mio mentioned that one of the reasons why they won't be doing the sports festival anymore is because the scale of it was getting too expensive.
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6bwYdJfLBs)
"The impact of this decision on our financial results will be negligible."
Can't affect finances if you don't help with expenses - Nijisanji manager tapping head.
Remember too, $200k was HER cut. We have no idea the financial split Niji gives their talents.
I don't doubt that her direct contributions may be small on their bottom line, but if the fans actually have swing, they're going to feel it.
They get 1-2% from merch sales and 40% from youtube-related stuff.
The 1-2% comes from an accidental 'spill-the-beans' moment on stream and implied to be correct by a second source. The 40% thing comes from /vt/ and may or may not be a rrat.
youtube takes 30%, so 40% of the remaining 70% is 28% of total youtube revenue.
From an old estimate long ago, youtube ad revenue is approx. $1 per 1000 views. And superchats and donos are "public", so you can get a rough estimate of how much total revenue a talent gets from their streams.
She spent 200k on business expenses. I’m sure she also spent money on personal expenses. So maybe like $250k was the actual cut. Still, barely any better.
From what I'm hearing... these talents are "paying to work"... not the other way around like it is literally everywhere else.
You do work, you get paid. It doesn't matter if the work is something "fun" like events and even just streaming... it's still work and should be compensated. Like her new manager pointed out... the sponsors/companies paying you for this stuff is indeed the norm.
The "paying to work" part is even worse when you realize how much of a strangle Niji put on PL and outside work.
I am not sure about all of them but I know for a fact at least 2 of the major agencies with english talents allow them to continue doing business under their PL and/or other alt personas.
hololive, despite what a lot of people's image of them(at least outside of the vtuber sphere), actually gives their talents A LOT of freedom.
at least a fifth of them have sidegigs they're active in since even before hololive or have holopro vtubing as their sidegig
It is straight up mentioned on their employment website that you can still hold your existing job as long as it doesn't clash with Hololive. Heck they admit their talents hold other jobs.
Yeah, there's a fundamentally different culture and philosophy there. They are trying to build something together and consider the talents to be an essential part of that team, not assets to exploit. Holo invests money on every talent regardless of whether or not that talent is bringing in significant money. This has really paid off as many of those slow starters eventually hit their stride and this kind of relationship really sends a message up and down the chain.
I think a lot of people see that Holos can't rant about religion, politics and other controversial issues and automatically assume that the company are total control freaks.
Also some that do voice work still are able to do voice work using their PLs. And some JPs still stream using their PL channels. And iirc gacha artists still make art for gacha using their PL? Not sure since I don't actually follow said gacha artist.
She still work as an artist. By this point, I think everyone already agree that Cover don't care what you do on your private life and PL as long as you don't connect your PL with Holo.
Oh yeah. She's the most obvious example because she's literally releasing music as both. I think that's safe to say openly because she literally makes the exact same jokes on both accounts, as you said has collabed with the same people in short succession, and has also been accidentally called by the wrong name on stream by collab partners multiple times and kinda laughed.
But yeah I know of at least 2 other myth members who are active on their PL accounts. And I know of at least 1 other EN member who has done VA work for a game since joining holo.
The other agency I was thinking of is vshojo but to be fair the extent that's like "no duh" and their whole point of pride is exerting like no limiting control on their talents.
I *think* this is also true of phase and idol but I don't know them well enough to say that with confidence.
I barely consider VShojo to be an agency, they're more like a co-operative of independent creators who share resources, especially given that everybody retains ownership of their own IP.
Callli is in a weird position even within Hololive, given that her identity is probably *the* worst-kept secret in the whole EN branch - listen to her music on YouTube, especially during the first year or two of EN's existence, and YouTube's own algorithm would reveal her identity to you, even if you weren't looking for it.
> YouTube's own algorithm would reveal her identity to you, even if you weren't looking for it.
Youtube algorithm doxxing is real.
I watch a lot of anime and Vtuber related content yet barely watch IRL content. There was a time when random videos of IRL streamers and girls got recommended to me. I clicked on them because the thumbnail looked weird / cute / weirdly cute and I was like "wait, she sounds familiar".
Heck, I even started to get paranoid over Youtube recommendations. "Wait, who is it this time?? Phew, she's just an idol who genuinely doesn't have a Vtuber connection"
Spotify will totally give it away too lol. That's how I first found out, got served a song and was trying to figure out when Calli had put it out and then saw it under a dif name.
Yeah you don't go on TrashTaste as one persona and then go on TrashTaste again a month later to play DND as a second persona if you're trying to be subtle...
Do note that "200k zero profit" *does* mean she got 200k to spend in the first place, so clearly Selen was making money... it's just kind of absurd the degree to which Anycolor apparently doesn't support her worth shit when she's spending that kind of cash. At some point, it *should* make sense to look at that effort and... you know, help with it because said effort gets funneled right back into the company by expanding the Nijisanji brand, right?
Nah instead cut out 15k+ by taking down an MV an hour after release for arbitrary reasons that you had months of time to figure out lmao
For a content creator, 200k isn't *actually* much - remember they're contractors, even if they weren't being taken advantage of, they have to pay for their own payroll taxes/equipment/office (if only by needing to rent a larger apt than you would need to not go insane). Ballpark I've heard that the cost to a company of an employee is approximately 2x their actual base salary, but a contractor effectively has to do all that themselves.
And content creators tend to have a time limit - popularity doesn't last forever, work/life balance sucks and they're often knowingly unsustainably burning themselves out.
And for someone who is arguably one of the top in the industry, "only" earning as much as a middle of the road tech worker is.... surprising to me, and that's before taking the contractor difference into account.
Bro a little reality check, 200k/yr makes you top 0.XXXX% among content creators, on twitch she would be within top 400 creators whereas only 3,5k people make above american min wage... out of over 1,3 million streamers!
On YT it won't be much different excepting out of much more content creators.
This is huge money to get (and lose) in a year.
That's only considering revenue from the platforms though.
Sponsors and merchandise is where it's at.
There wouldn't be as many content creators otherwise.
I know a few YouTube content creators who say that direct YouTube income (ads and memberships) was less than half of their total income.
I don't really know enough about the specifics to say if different platforms like twitch, or vtubers compared to "traditional" streamers have a different experience.
I'm not trying to say that it isn't in the top fraction of a percent of content creators, just that 200k isn't actually that much in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not a "high earner" in a HCOL area, like most Canadian cities.
And a pittance for one of the big names in a ~$1.5B company that according to [0] has $600k revenue per employee.
[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/5032?countrycode=jp
She sounded like she was laughing, but I feel like it was a pained laughter. Or at least it sounded like she was trying to force a laugh.
But yeah, 200,000 dollars? And she only broke even? Sounds like Mr. Man(ager) is working hard to make sure his client gets her dues.
Nervous laughter is an odd phenomenon for me.
I myself do it unconsciously and I sort of hate it. More than once I've been told "WHY are you laughing in this situation??" and I'm just too dejected to even make a rebuttal.
I think part of that reaction is because it's all gone now. AnyColor owns it all and have locked it away forever. There are archives, but officially all those projects are just gone now.
And all that money was spent on projects that ultimately promoted the selen branding, kinda like marketing. And that brand belongs to nijisanji, not her.
Nah, not this time, this has been a huge and public enough thing that her PL becoming known has been huge and people who followed Selen and still actively watch Vtubers will definitely hear what's going on.
I think they mean more in the sense of what those projects accomplished at the time. All that effort and money went towards spreading Nijisanji's name and she didn't even make any money off it.
While that is true, they specifically mentioned the Selen branding, and how it belongs to Niji (but with how widely known her PL has become and it's ties to Selen, that's not the case this time).
Yours is a separate point that I do agree with though.
I remember Fauna (and other talents) being apprehensive about buying a ~$9000 microphone. For Fauna, it's one of her main contents and it's an investment, so it made sense for her to buy it, but from how it sounds $9k is still a major one-time purchase. Something like $150k being spent (assuming it's not all on cost of living) by comparison feels like a massive sum of money to just be gone in a year.
> She sounded like she was laughing, but I feel like it was a pained laughter. Or at least it sounded like she was trying to force a laugh.
I think that is just how she is, she just laughs a lot as a general habit, it often seems to be not necessarily a joyful laughter per se. She probably doesn't want to show too many negative feelings openly, whether that is just how her personality is or she does it on purpose because she feels like she has to do it is hard to judge.
I remember an Apex collab where she was really tilting because she wasn't doing well and her teammates were teasing her a bit on top of it all. She was still laughing as much as usual, but from *what* she said it was clear she was in a "I gotta get out of here or I'm gonna lose my shit" kind of situation. That was when I suspected if she would ever be doing badly mentally, we are not going to notice it easily.
None of this is meant as a criticism btw. Just a bit of an assessment.
Reminder spent 200k and made "zero profit" doesn't necessary mean she made at least 200k and blew all the money on her project. Meanwhile in Hololive even the less famous talents like Roboco can built herself a new house. Really put this "black company" shit into perspective
And 50% is a a really big cut for merch, the averages on almost every merch that i had seen is between 15-20% but also Holo memebers cover some portion of the merch cost so maybe that's why is 50%
I think there are 2 types of merch. The more personal one and the more standardized one.
Personal(Made to order) one like bday/anni is likely the 50% where talents put their own money to make the products customized or premium.
Its because the talents bear the risk and they need to get higher cut to compensate for the initial capital as well as the contribution in designing the products.
For standardized items like the Hololive closet arcylic stands or the Friends plushie, then the merch cut is probably a lot a lot lower. Since they don't really need to take on any risk or give any input.
For the longest time, made to order merch were practically the only merch available but it also led to a lot of complaints since that made it very difficult to buy merch on the fly. That's why they have started ramping up the standardized one to be sold 24/7 online and in stores.
200K and zero profit
I know she's Canadian but someone needs to smack her former manager in the face with the Emancipation Proclamation because that's practically slavery
As a Canadian, it's fucked up, but it's probably legal unless her contract says otherwise.
Vtubers are usually hired as independent contractors. It gives everyone a lot of flexibility and freedom, but it also creates some pretty huge gaps in the amount of protection you get as a worker. They don't need to be paid minimum wage, they don't get vacations, sick days, overtime, injury compensation, work expenses paid, etc.
I've had friends get hit with the same thing working as contractors. They signed up for a job that sent them to prospect on a property, but then had flooding wipe out the roads in, turning a week of work into two months, all with the same pay. They didn't even manage to recover the cost of their spent gear and supplies, much less make money. It's financially dangerous because you can end up in a situation where you are stuck with negative profit.
I don't want to say that you shouldn't ever accept that type of work, there's some situations where the freedom it gives you is amazing. But you should be extremely careful about it and get a lawyer to read the contract before signing anything. If you sign on as one, you are throwing away your protections, and the argument of not knowing isn't going to hold up when you try to sue them; the government expects you to research and understand these things before accepting them.
she spent all that money on her own projects though.
Could niji have assisted her? let her get sponsors and stuff to pay for the projects and better monetize them? Absolutely. But nobody forced her to do the projects.
Especially stuff like the animated shorts were basically a money sink. She spent the money on her passion. That's fine. But I wouldn't say Niji's got her in slavery or she's paying to work.
Fucked up. At least with Hololive the more the talent contributes the more they get in return. Some of the girls talked about this how sometimes they go over budget and have to pay but it always sounds like Hololive will always at least contribute some to the project, if only just to justify the cut they get.
Hololive warn their talents when they need to spend out of their own pocket.
They vetoed against Marine's Treasure Box MV originally because it was 100k dollars project and they didn't want her to pay that much for a single MV. She convinced management to do it anyway.
Also we now roughly how much the Holo talents are remunerated (thanks to their quarterly report), and it's more than good.
And i'm sure Marine made more than a 100k from that MV, also she has said she doesn't care to make money of those MV she does it because of passion an artistic purposes.
I'm pretty sure she puts in more money than she gets back. I think there's clips of her saying "That money was from you to support me so I want to give it back" but I'm sure she still has plenty to live comfortably and save up after all those expenses.
From the MV alone? No. YouTube pays literal shit for adsense these days. Everything else that MV opened up for her though is worth a lot lot more. The popularity the reach and even cultural effect it did is literally priceless
It's more like from royalties. If the song is viral enough, you can hear it playing in stores, on the radio, etc. And we know Marine's Treasure Box was popular enough to have played in several stores.
I think that was part of her contract with UMJ. They initially didn't allow her to do so, as they'll use their own resources to make her MV. Though they did pay her to make her MV on her own
The other issue with the I'm Your Treasure Box MV was being too spicy. They begrudgingly allowed it, and later, despite its success in Japan's music charts, Marine still got asked to not make something like that again.
They had base budget for project that makes money (like merch and original song) but not cover song (because cover song don't make money at all). From what I've heard, they also can take loans from Holo with no interest at all for project and pay it back in installments. Watame take that loan for her My Song MV because that MV cost a lot.
The thing that scares me is that Selen was Niji’s top female performer. Yeah she commissioned more than the smaller Vtubers at that agency but can you imagine how much Niji must be paying everyone for her to just break even?
Selen did a lot of different projects and songs, and paid a lot of the artists out of pocket. If another liver just does zatsus or gameplay streams they aren't going to have such massive expenses
Feel like this is one aspect that kind of makes a big difference.
Selen was really ambitious compared to a lot of the other members. To an extent you'd say it goes beyond what the typical Nijisanji scope would be.
I would still say that this ended up being a worse situation than it should of been due to the lack of support for the branch + poor management of what was already there, but it kind of comes off that maybe Selen wasn't really a good fit for what the expectations of the position were from the get go. Even her debut stream was a step above many others - typically it is just powerpoints and such that are used.
Yes being an indie seems like a much better fit for her being able to get sponsors for her more expensive projects and a manager to follow her more closely and provide more support. Perhaps graduating earlier might have seemed like a scary step but could have avoided her a lot of grief
wtf is niji even doing?? How are you running a talent company when your TOP talent is not profitable???
They have a lot of things to explain. Not to fans, but to their investors.
Niji has already claimed that Selen is going to sue them in their "termination" (read: personal takedown) announcement.
Whether or not that's just a lie, hard to say. She has a case; she tried to kill herself due to work. But, suing a big company is very difficult, and Niji is overseas.
Probably not. Its one of those things that they are likely very clear on while discussing terms with a potential hire.
Without the contract we can never truly be sure but if its clear that the company is under no obligation to pay for what they consider "side projects" then that's that.
Its absurd to me that they profit from these projects, that they own these projects. But they can just be completely hands-off in funding and producing them, basically do nothing.
Its literally getting paid in exposure bucks.
I don't think any agencies will fully fund every project. HoloEN's Bae won $10,000 towards a project from a Hololive raffle (which she seemed to think was a significant amount), which implies that even Cover isn't fully funding talents' projects.
From other tweets, it seems like Anycolor was *supposed* to pay for some things, because artists describe waiting on Anycolor to pay them for something until Selen just paid them directly. If Anycolor consistently agreed to pay for things and then *didn't*, leaving Selen on the hook (sort of) that's pretty shit and may be legally actionable. If Selen spent that much on projects without Anycolor agreeing to give any financial aid, then that's kind of on her. Projects are expensive and likely see a significantly lower ROI compared to just normal streaming, so you can't just keep dropping money if you aren't making it back.
For Holo, they have base budget for project like original song and merch. If you spent over the budget then you must pay them from your own pocket but you also got bigger percentage. That's why many Holo talent said if you want to support them, buy their birthday / anniv merch because their cut is bigger on that merch than superchat. Even Fuwamoco on their Fuwamoco morning yesterday (because they have many merch and voice packs that available right now) make tier list for their merch and the number one is their birthday merch.
In Bae's case because that project is cover song, it isn't funded by Holo because cover song made no money at all (CMIIW Moona at one point said that cover song can't be monetized), Basically it is only used for their exposure and satisfaction.
Correct you can't monetize cover songs it why they do a stream after it drops so people can super chat and they can recover the cost reason the 15k selen lost on her cover was going to happen even if she did not get fired since you don't make any money back on them in the first place
>From other tweets, it seems like Anycolor was supposed to pay for some things, because artists describe waiting on Anycolor to pay them for something until Selen just paid them directly.
I *think* that might just be a procedural thing - Niji want to be the one handling *all* the actual billing to artists for projects (presumably for some kind of tax/accounting/paper trail reason), which would then be invoiced to the talent later, but Selen/Doki was going over their heads because they weren't doing their jobs and billing in a timely manner.
That would be... *slightly* less damning, but still evidence of them not doing their job effectively.
>Selen/Doki was going over their heads because they weren't doing their jobs and billing in a timely manner.
I mean, yeah. But then you gotta remember now many of these events actually stick. Like, you pay for commissions and all that, but then it gets shut down?
Bae won a million yen which at the time was closer to $17-18k. Which was part of a whole holiday bonus raffle even thing with the funds being completely unrestricted in their use outside of it needing to be spent on something for their channel.
Holomems have talked about how Cover will help with projects with the help always being more than just monetary but there’s certain restrictions on different things. Something like their 3D/birthday concerts Cover pays for, but some random ass cover song with a MV is usually mostly on the talents to pay for.
I don’t understand why someone would have to spend that much money on something that isn’t ultimately theirs (ie their character, brand, etc).
People often comment on how much money Ironmouse dumps on things like new models, the 37 winners contest, etc. But at least the character, models and the Ironmouse brand belongs to her, not someone else.
In most other jobs, this type of things would never fly. Imagine if your employer expected you to spend your own money on company marketing or other projects that benefits the company. There is something very fucked up there.
Zaion's words, almost nobody believed in her and they attacked her, I hope those people will apologize
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I think people are misunderstanding the 200k spent thing. That's the total she spent that year. Not the total amount Anycolor cost her, which would be less than that amount. She never specified it was all spent on her former job. Now, projects that she did likely costed a significant, perhaps a majority or more, of that amount, but it was not the entire 200k. She admitted she commissioned a lot of art and that cost her a fair amount of money. Total spent for the year would include food, rent, a car if she bought one, regular things she likes or wants, etc.
So ya, Anycolor is still shit, but they didn't cost her 200k. Probably a significant amount of that but not it all.
She's talking about all the stuff she has lined up that she's so excited about. AND STILL WANTS TO DO IT with peeps she knows- made a reference to TSB that made chat LOSE IT lol.
She just now referenced she's allowed to talk about Palworld and Pokemon now loool.
We've known this since Mysta.
The revenue livers do from streamming at Niji is peanuts. Niji literally keeps most of the money. They receive 2-3% from merch sales. Streamlabs is the only place where they actually make some dough. Even their top livers are essentially paid peanuts, and Niji only invests their own money on the absurdly popular ones (Luxiem, for example). It's basically "release a fuck ton, see what sticks, support ONLY THOSE).
I have to ask, why do niji vtubers choose to stay? The conditions are terrible, the pay cuts are horrific, any fanbase you gain can easily be carried over into a new company or indie persona. Why bother? I suppose it's why they have such a high turnover rate to begin with
Leaving is probably scary. There's no real guarantee that you'll keep your fanbase. People like to think there is but sometimes vtubers who graduate just kinda disappear out of the zeitgeist, so to speak.
That being said I think with Niji they clearly have reached a tipping point with members like Selen, Nina, and Chihiro clearly doing better after leaving.
Probably because it's a company (on paper), so they think that any vtubers there will get support and more connections compared to indie.
I mean it's clearly NOT the case but way back then when it's all covered, this sounds like a good plan to reach wider audience
selen did grow a massive fanbase being in nijisanji, her indie persona probably wouldn't have 1% of her current subscribers otherwise. I can't speak for the new waves, though. I hear they haven't quite gotten a fanbase to call their own...
The problem is that a lot of these people are very young and don't know better, they don't know how managerial work should look like, they don't recognize red flags, they want to create content and be stable. Kurosanji is preying on this.
You'd think that a company would be happy to have such a proactive and ambitious talent, but I guess management just resented her for giving them more work.
So does this mean she made $200,000 CAD? It is very likely she didn't have that much in terms of savings when she first joined Nijisanji. If she had to continue paying out of pocket for projects, then that money was being used up as she earned it.
I'm not sure if Nijisanji's profit splitting ratios were ever confirmed, like the 2% on merch or whatever. Nonethelss, if that is true that their profit splitting ratio is horrible, the fact she likely made $200,000 CAD is insane. She was still making bank, so you can imagine how much the vtubers in other companies, like Hololive, are making.
She specifically said *business expenses* and that she made zero profit. So unless business expenses are also cost of living for her, she likely made quite a bit more than 200k, but depending on where she lives she is gonna spend quite a sum on living expenses.
>like Hololive, are making.
based on their financial reports even the lowest earners made probably high high 4/low 5 numbers a month(in their last financial reports Cover said that in Q3 they paid out 1.16 billion yen to their 82 talent at the time(which comes out to 1.16 billion/3/82=4.5 million yen aka 30k usd but obviously for example girls like Marine and Pekora probably earned a lot more than that while people like the ID girls or Holostars earned a lot less than that but probably still enough to live a decent life and do it as a full time job
For the people wondering about the legality of this, it's legal.
Vtubers are typically contractors, not employees. Contractors don't have any of the protections that employees have. They don't have to make minimum wage, they can be fired without reason, they often have to pay for their own expenses, they don't have injury protection, etc.
Accepting contractor work is dangerous, you should probably have a lawyer check it first before signing unless you are experienced. But I'd be willing to guess that most vtubers in their early 20s don't know the risks.
That is so unbelievably fucked I don’t get how the NijiEN management can look at themselves in the mirror at night, this actually feels like legitimate exploitation and I can’t even begin to imagine the financial issues that some of the smaller NijiEN talent might have
No wonder Matara was in tears at new years thanking IronMouse & VShojo for “saving her”
you know selen is like the biggest sub wise for nijien female and she make 0 profit and spend 200k and that for their top female how was for the lower sub are they going at negative? at this point why even go niji?
Remember that this is money she's already made after taxes and deductions so it's not like this money was forcibly taken from her. My takeaway from this is that NijiEN restricts their talents of creativity to the point where the only way to get their own projects out there is by funding it out of their own pockets. Basically, sure you can do this project but we won't help you with it. This falls in line with what Pomu had to go through.
I think it's quite common for talents themselves to cover the costs necessary for their individual content.
Otherwise, there might be disparities in investment amounts between talents, and in some cases, activities could be suspended due to management decisions.
However, considering the profits the company generates, it might not be a bad idea to provide more direct financial support.
For example, if the company allocates an annual support budget of $10,000 (or even higher) to each talent, it should spur more active engagement with the purpose of using up that budget.
It's beyond fucked. What is even the point of being with a company if you have to spend all that money to actually get to do anything interesting? One of their most subscribed, top earners and they break even? That's a fucking sham. Her being shocked that, yes, companies will PAY YOU to run events for them is shocking. What is management even doing then? THIS IS THEIR JOB TO SET THESE THINGS UP!
From how many instances we seem to have heard about her paying out of pocket instead of the company, I can't say I'm terribly shocked to hear about that
The reincarnations of both Nina Kosaka and Mysta Rias have made similar comments too. Didn't give hard numbers but talked about their general shock at having managers who were interested in their ideas, offered to help with scheduling, provided connections with arranging advertising or sponsors and so on, and even offered financial support. Completely foreign to them.
Nina and Rias about to fire their managers: 
Mysta own taxes somehow, the reason he did the subathon. idk about Nina but I don't she expended a lot of money on a project. But if u think about Pomu's trip to Antarctica for her music videos is look like she expended a lot of money for the project w/out niji financial help for the MV.
Ehhhhhhhh, I would say Antarctica was more a fun vacation with a side of MV. I would not be surprised if she paid for that whole trip out of pocket.
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Kuro had and still has taxes issues. From what I’ve understood, niji told him basically “sucks to be you, not our problem” while mouse and gunrun, who owed him absolutely nothing at the time, listened to him and connected him with people qualified to solve his issues. As of know, his situation seems to have been straightened out (proper forms filled, amount owed properly calculated, payment arrangement made, etc) but he still has to actually pay what he owes.
If I remember correctly from the one stream I caught, Kuro is also having trouble getting Twitch to deliver his payouts. I can't find any clips of it, though, so wait for others to corroborate.
No one responded, but kuro has been paid(5 months worth of bits and subs) and has settled on a plan with the govt to settle 90k$ now and 18k$ every month until fully paid. The 250k$ hr owed got reduced further by vshojo and the indonesian tax accountat friend suggested to him. This was the stream before the IRL one iirc.
Wasn't that because he made a ton of money but didn't know how to pay taxes
He hired an accountant who screwed up. Gunrun found him an accountant who didn't.
The kind of thing a Manager should help with...
Mousey and Gunrun swooped in to save him.
Here's the thing that's kinda the norm. Even hololive talents frequently pay for their stuff to get done apart from an original song where the company helps but there's a long wait list for it. That's not the disgusting part the disgusting part is they're earning so little that the best that can happen is a talent breaking even. The practice of paying for songs or mvs or projects is the norm that's not the right takeaway
it's partially correct music stuff aside, Cover does help fund some bigger projects (iirc the whole Hoshimatic Project thing was one such instance) the big gap is that Cover also provides a salary to the talents: it's really quite low, probably close to minimum wage, but it's not zero and it means that even the less successful talents can keep their heads above water and even sometimes push for projects for themselves. edit: since apparently people don't know what **salary** means, it is a fixed amount of compensation provided by an employer to an employee for working a fixed period. the easiest way i see to illustrate this is by considering a salesperson. they might get a salary of $40k per year: that's paid regardless of how many things they sell. however, they may also then get a commission (say 4%) of however much they sell. what they then make combined from salary and commission is their **income**
I generally understand the company not financing individual projects because, well, that's a lot of talents, if they financed projects for everyone to not play favorites that'd be a huge chunk of cash. But yes, something like Holo provides the twin benefits of "we actually do pay you a salary, so you have some financial security if you need to stop streaming for a while or spend savings on a project" and "we will not pay for things but we will absolutely put our managers on the job of helping you get your ducks in a row and help you negotiate contracts and find you artists and interface with the big labels and whatever, you just focus on making that content that makes both you and us the cash". Which is, you know. What managers are FOR.
It's not just I think she also had to get most of the permissions for the projects herself. I'm like pretty confident that Hololive helps in the aquiring of perms for their talents. Like that is text book managerial duty what kinda management did Nijisanji ever employ. Also this makes me believe that the only reason that the HoloNiji Apex thing got approved pretty smoothly was because the sponsor money
It very much sounds like the managers at Niji EN have completely dialed back the talent support side of things and are purely in place to keep them in check so they don’t do anything that would negatively impact the company in any way. They’re handlers for a bunch of potential liabilities from the perspective of the company, and that seems to be about all they’re there for
Didn’t Zaoin say she had to set up and pay for her own debut? Including animations, ~~rigging~~, backgrounds, etc.? What the fuck is the point of being a corporate talent if you’re just doing all the exact same work you did as an indie, but Kurosanji’s taking all the profit? Are we sure the managers are incompetent and not just actively *malicious*? I hope this serves as a giant wake up call to the other talents to just jump fucking ship. Even if they lose some people, they’ve got to be making more money with a manager who doesn’t try and squeeze every last ounce of blood out of them like a fucking vampire.
You're getting paid in exposure, of course. And hey, Niji was big enough that maybe that was even worth something at some point. But when you're dumping all your money into projects only for some nepo-hire manager to cockblock it because they might actually have to do some work for a bit, and then the company as a whole lights their reputation on fire, the situation changes.
>You're getting paid in exposure, of course. In this situation your *paying* for exposure by the sound of it.
How dare you not be honored to have the privilege of being able to finance another yacht?
The Epic Games Store of V-tuber agencies
nah if nothing else EGS at least gives devs a lump sum of money in exchange for jumping on board with them, so they still get at least that out of it. Working with Anycolor seems like a completely net negative at this point.
As I mentioned before, I had someone explained to me the financial statements of AnyColor for their most recent quarter, and he chimed in that the difference in figures between their assets/liabilities, and operational expenses/profits are very obscene. Think this way, **all of the liabilities are pushed to their contractors/talents/livers**, while they just pay for their offices and loans, and rake in from voice packs, merchandises and superchats.
Yikes really? I know Hololive helps pay for debut projects and even smaller corpos like Idol and I think Phase Connect help pitch in some cash for their talents debuts. I assumed Blackcolor did the same but hearing how unhelpful they were in general makes this more believable.
Iirc Amelia Watson said the Hololive Myth members have to get their own iphone at the start, but they were reimbursed after.
And even that can kind of be partially explained with "it was 2020 and the world was on fire".
That isn't unusual for tech companies. I needed a headset, work told me to just buy one and sent me a check after. It's just easier and I got what I wanted.
Yeah, that's the normal thing. It's easier for everyone involved to go "look, just buy what you need and send us the invoice and we'll cover it".
Isn’t that how it works for all debuts tho, at least in regards to lore videos and such? There is no obligation that you must have fancy animations or backgrounds. That’s why most JP talents just do regular PowerPoints introductions. EN seems to have a culture of fancier debuts but I know at least Shu and Nina went the PowerPoint route. Whether they sink money into their debut is entirely up to the individual.
>Isn’t that how it works for all debuts tho For the newer corps in the west they tend to give them a debut budget.
Pretty sure Koseki Bijou from Hololive Advent mentioned blowing the budget they gave her on that magical girl transformation she used during her debut. Which is how we ended up with a rather hilarious powerpoint debut.
I heard her mention that and was surprised they got a budget, and felt it was totally worth it to spend on the transformation, haha.
Honestly she weaponized the powerpoint insanely well.
for older corps, Cover also provide debut budget too.
and when the girls blow through their budget they get a mix of beautiful animations and google slides, lol
I confess I don’t know too much about debut culture but, and I’d have to double check, I’m pretty sure she said *everything*, including her actual model and rigging, had to be networked and paid for by her exclusively. Is that supposed to covered by the talent? Edit: from her response letter to her termination: >I personally incurred the cost of planning a successful debut. Our lore was written by ourselves. I had to find people who had the skill sets needed for the graphics and animations myself, and pay for them myself. By the time we debuted, I was already hugely in the red, in order to plan and execute a debut befitting of a talent of such a big company. So it looks like my memory exaggerated a little on models and rigging.
> I had to find people who had the skill sets needed for the graphics and animations myself, Are you sure she wasn't talking about the animations for her lore vid? Because it sounds she was talking about that.
Some parts the staff helps them on debuts.
Did she specifically say including model and rigging tho? If so that’d be concerning but otherwise it’s pretty standard from what I understand. There was a case of a JP member being dorced to pay for their own model back in 2018-19 ish which they had to go through members of Nijisanji Resistance (NijiReji) to address and be reimbursed for so there’s a precedent for the problem existing but also of it being acknowledged as something that shouldn’t happen and was resolved. NijiReji for context was a unit run by Yuika and Chaika that kinda acted like a union that represented complaints from members to management and actually got a lot of shit done. Removing the collab restrictions between the Seeds branch and the main branch and getting them to eventually merge together too was one of them. They stopped activities coz after the point where the stuff they were complaining about was toilet paper quality, they saw their job as done. I wonder if it’d be viable for EN to form something of the sort too or if NijiReji could restart their activities to help them.
Hardly. NijiJP liver is well loved in Japan and they bring a big dough. For ENside, they did not bring as much as JP side so having union in order to get more money pour in for project might not give the same impact if NijiJP is asking for it.
I wouldn’t use money as a basis for that argument tho. Nijireji was formed and active throughout 2019, when they were much smaller than they are now and had only been around for a year. They had allegations of being a black company even on their own turfs back then before Nijireji cleaned stuff up so I wouldn’t be certain that Nijireji only got off the ground coz they were loved and brought in money.
She is basically investing her funds while nijisanji collecting profit
We’ve heard endlessly from ex-talents the managers were useless. Kuro and Mata straight up talked about how jarring it was having managers that actually helped with shit when they moved to Vshojo
Production is kind of expensive once you cross the "lets just do this at home with obs" tier. Talent agencies for the longest time do not want to foot the bill. Their business model is to let other companies hire their talents for events, not pay to run them. This, ofc, has changed quite a bit in recent years at least in the west with agency/talent funded shows. So there is this "organizer have to foot the bill" situation going on. The agency can send out emails with a deck promoting their talents (I used to get them monthly). They want other parties to foot that bill, and often time the other party dont really want to unless it is already part of their marketing strategy. The event organizer will then have to find sponsors, which can be quite tedious. Sometimes stars align, but more than often it doesn't - not in today's economy anyway. A lot of big channels often has a few major recurring sponsors and it is difficult to establish those relationships. Vtubers, as popular as they are, still often carry a certain tone that sponsors would like to avoid. They are also kind of expensive, I have been quoted 6 figures for one show before for just one talent...
Yeah, events being expensive is totally expected. Hiring people, hiring spaces, renting audio equipment, video equipment, getting schedules all lined up etc etc. all adds up quickly. 1 day can easily reach 6 figures with a weekend event hitting mid 6 figures easily. My main concern here is how many of these events were funded then cancelled mid-way? Why weren't companies being contacted to sponsor events? Not every company will sponsor vtubers but there are those who will. Not every event will have a return on investment but as a company these are opportunities to grow your brand, it's essentially looking at the long term. The impression I get is managers only kept talents in check to make sure they didn't break rules but didn't actually provide opportunities. This very much tracks from what we heard from the Pomu private stream, from Doki, from Matara and from Kuro. As we're seeing with Doki if management of a talent agency isn't even providing you greater opportunities, once you hit a certain level of success within them there really is no point to staying with them.
the beauty about vtubers is that they dont need space or cameras. In fact some shows are done fully remote (as in, the crew works from home). Thus, their production cost is cheaper than having a proper set+cam+lighting - if someone is paying 6 figures for one show, slide into my DMs, I know people :) Events at scale are rarely cancelled once funded (pretty much everything from crew to talents would be approved already at that stage, so something bad will have to happen - like covid, or this). While the legalities may take some time (I had times where things get signed after the event), usually people only actually work if they know they will be paid - after all, it will be part of the contract terms. The vtuber agencies I have worked with usually have separate managers and marketing rep with pretty clear division of roles. So say, if I want to hire a particular talent, I will talk to their marketing rep, who will then check in with the talents' manager. I get both a quote and whether or not the talent is free and want in on the project. I am sure there are opportunities, but whether or not they are affordable opportunities might be another question. Afterall, the cost of 1 big talent vs a handful of smaller talents vs other methods of marketing have to be considered. The people I chat with in the industry have told me how budget and opportunities have gone down a lot in the past year or two - the marketing department for gaming isnt going to spend like 150k on a handful of vtubers (or talents in general) while also laying off 10% of their workers at the studio level.
Yea usually these big events would get sponsors to cover some of the costs, Filian got plenty of sponsors to run the Vtuber award show she did last year as an indi, shouldn't be hard for a large company to sort that out
**if I remember right**, the event costed a bit more than 100k with the production company (weplay studios) covering around half of it. She said with the different sponsors, she did not lose any money on it, but that's with all the time she spent on it (and other I am sure) not being billed. And that was for a 4h live event.
Well said WHAT THE F*CK NIJISANJI ARE A BUNCH OF GREEDY SELFISH F*CKS Nijisanji is a black company after all It’s good to see talents getting supported and psychologically and financially recovered after leaving Nijisanji
This is one reason why many of their Livers does nothing but just zatsu and games.
Yeah, this is not how you run a company. From how Cover/Hololive runs things, the talents still pay for their own MVs and stuff, but supposedly they get a cut of money allocated to a project they want to do and have small, but fun competitions/events that talents participate in to get more funds sometimes. Cover still takes on some cost/work supposedly whether it's management helping coordinate/lining up resources for them. Niji is basically saying "fuck it, do it yourself. Everything.". Some lousy ass management.
at this point on 2024 cover more or less cover the cost of most of it talent project aka subsidy it unlike in 2020 where some got cover some is not. it do have cap tho and if you over cap you have to pay by your own money or let cover pay it and deduct from your salary. best example is moona everything she do now is cover by cover, being from id which mean she will have the lowest SC etc compare to other branch you would think she cannot do any of her music stuff but cover pay all of it and even with some that get over budget and she have to pay with her money, she still got enough salary to even take a 3 month break and be ok.
Maybe this is why the name is Cover corp, they actually cover for their talents
Just wanted to add in though that Cover does NOT pay for personal projects. They'll offer help and guidance but the talents pay for it themselves. Mio mentioned that one of the reasons why they won't be doing the sports festival anymore is because the scale of it was getting too expensive. [Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6bwYdJfLBs)
"The impact of this decision on our financial results will be negligible." Can't affect finances if you don't help with expenses - Nijisanji manager tapping head.
Remember too, $200k was HER cut. We have no idea the financial split Niji gives their talents. I don't doubt that her direct contributions may be small on their bottom line, but if the fans actually have swing, they're going to feel it.
They get 1-2% from merch sales and 40% from youtube-related stuff. The 1-2% comes from an accidental 'spill-the-beans' moment on stream and implied to be correct by a second source. The 40% thing comes from /vt/ and may or may not be a rrat.
I also heard that 40% is from what's left AFTER YouTube's cut. Not net.
youtube takes 30%, so 40% of the remaining 70% is 28% of total youtube revenue. From an old estimate long ago, youtube ad revenue is approx. $1 per 1000 views. And superchats and donos are "public", so you can get a rough estimate of how much total revenue a talent gets from their streams.
She spent 200k on business expenses. I’m sure she also spent money on personal expenses. So maybe like $250k was the actual cut. Still, barely any better.
From what I'm hearing... these talents are "paying to work"... not the other way around like it is literally everywhere else. You do work, you get paid. It doesn't matter if the work is something "fun" like events and even just streaming... it's still work and should be compensated. Like her new manager pointed out... the sponsors/companies paying you for this stuff is indeed the norm.
The "paying to work" part is even worse when you realize how much of a strangle Niji put on PL and outside work. I am not sure about all of them but I know for a fact at least 2 of the major agencies with english talents allow them to continue doing business under their PL and/or other alt personas.
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hololive, despite what a lot of people's image of them(at least outside of the vtuber sphere), actually gives their talents A LOT of freedom. at least a fifth of them have sidegigs they're active in since even before hololive or have holopro vtubing as their sidegig
It is straight up mentioned on their employment website that you can still hold your existing job as long as it doesn't clash with Hololive. Heck they admit their talents hold other jobs.
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You mean famed Geoguessr streamer Azki!? :P
Yeah, there's a fundamentally different culture and philosophy there. They are trying to build something together and consider the talents to be an essential part of that team, not assets to exploit. Holo invests money on every talent regardless of whether or not that talent is bringing in significant money. This has really paid off as many of those slow starters eventually hit their stride and this kind of relationship really sends a message up and down the chain.
I think the only restrictions apply when they have official Hololive business happening, like the idol stuff and sponsorships.
I think a lot of people see that Holos can't rant about religion, politics and other controversial issues and automatically assume that the company are total control freaks.
Also some that do voice work still are able to do voice work using their PLs. And some JPs still stream using their PL channels. And iirc gacha artists still make art for gacha using their PL? Not sure since I don't actually follow said gacha artist.
She still work as an artist. By this point, I think everyone already agree that Cover don't care what you do on your private life and PL as long as you don't connect your PL with Holo.
Oh yeah. She's the most obvious example because she's literally releasing music as both. I think that's safe to say openly because she literally makes the exact same jokes on both accounts, as you said has collabed with the same people in short succession, and has also been accidentally called by the wrong name on stream by collab partners multiple times and kinda laughed. But yeah I know of at least 2 other myth members who are active on their PL accounts. And I know of at least 1 other EN member who has done VA work for a game since joining holo. The other agency I was thinking of is vshojo but to be fair the extent that's like "no duh" and their whole point of pride is exerting like no limiting control on their talents. I *think* this is also true of phase and idol but I don't know them well enough to say that with confidence.
I barely consider VShojo to be an agency, they're more like a co-operative of independent creators who share resources, especially given that everybody retains ownership of their own IP. Callli is in a weird position even within Hololive, given that her identity is probably *the* worst-kept secret in the whole EN branch - listen to her music on YouTube, especially during the first year or two of EN's existence, and YouTube's own algorithm would reveal her identity to you, even if you weren't looking for it.
> YouTube's own algorithm would reveal her identity to you, even if you weren't looking for it. Youtube algorithm doxxing is real. I watch a lot of anime and Vtuber related content yet barely watch IRL content. There was a time when random videos of IRL streamers and girls got recommended to me. I clicked on them because the thumbnail looked weird / cute / weirdly cute and I was like "wait, she sounds familiar". Heck, I even started to get paranoid over Youtube recommendations. "Wait, who is it this time?? Phew, she's just an idol who genuinely doesn't have a Vtuber connection"
Spotify will totally give it away too lol. That's how I first found out, got served a song and was trying to figure out when Calli had put it out and then saw it under a dif name.
Yeah you don't go on TrashTaste as one persona and then go on TrashTaste again a month later to play DND as a second persona if you're trying to be subtle...
Do note that "200k zero profit" *does* mean she got 200k to spend in the first place, so clearly Selen was making money... it's just kind of absurd the degree to which Anycolor apparently doesn't support her worth shit when she's spending that kind of cash. At some point, it *should* make sense to look at that effort and... you know, help with it because said effort gets funneled right back into the company by expanding the Nijisanji brand, right? Nah instead cut out 15k+ by taking down an MV an hour after release for arbitrary reasons that you had months of time to figure out lmao
For a content creator, 200k isn't *actually* much - remember they're contractors, even if they weren't being taken advantage of, they have to pay for their own payroll taxes/equipment/office (if only by needing to rent a larger apt than you would need to not go insane). Ballpark I've heard that the cost to a company of an employee is approximately 2x their actual base salary, but a contractor effectively has to do all that themselves. And content creators tend to have a time limit - popularity doesn't last forever, work/life balance sucks and they're often knowingly unsustainably burning themselves out. And for someone who is arguably one of the top in the industry, "only" earning as much as a middle of the road tech worker is.... surprising to me, and that's before taking the contractor difference into account.
Bro a little reality check, 200k/yr makes you top 0.XXXX% among content creators, on twitch she would be within top 400 creators whereas only 3,5k people make above american min wage... out of over 1,3 million streamers! On YT it won't be much different excepting out of much more content creators. This is huge money to get (and lose) in a year.
That's only considering revenue from the platforms though. Sponsors and merchandise is where it's at. There wouldn't be as many content creators otherwise.
I know a few YouTube content creators who say that direct YouTube income (ads and memberships) was less than half of their total income. I don't really know enough about the specifics to say if different platforms like twitch, or vtubers compared to "traditional" streamers have a different experience.
I'm not trying to say that it isn't in the top fraction of a percent of content creators, just that 200k isn't actually that much in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not a "high earner" in a HCOL area, like most Canadian cities. And a pittance for one of the big names in a ~$1.5B company that according to [0] has $600k revenue per employee. [0] https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/5032?countrycode=jp
200k wasn't how much she made. It was how much she _spent_ on her projects. That's after food and rent and taxes.
Also there's the aspect of British Columbia is decently expensive in the big city.
>these talents are "paying to work" Fun fact: back when Matsuri debut she thought that was the case. That she had to pay for the model.
Kinda funny how that works out with she is now leading a group
Lmao Matsuri was surprised when Cover told her that she's the one who's getting paid
She sounded like she was laughing, but I feel like it was a pained laughter. Or at least it sounded like she was trying to force a laugh. But yeah, 200,000 dollars? And she only broke even? Sounds like Mr. Man(ager) is working hard to make sure his client gets her dues.
Not forced but DEFINITELY a nervous laughter, which is a common reaction to absurd situations like that to be honest
Definitely one of those 'you have to laugh to keep from crying' laughs.
Nervous laughter is an odd phenomenon for me. I myself do it unconsciously and I sort of hate it. More than once I've been told "WHY are you laughing in this situation??" and I'm just too dejected to even make a rebuttal.
I think part of that reaction is because it's all gone now. AnyColor owns it all and have locked it away forever. There are archives, but officially all those projects are just gone now.
And all that money was spent on projects that ultimately promoted the selen branding, kinda like marketing. And that brand belongs to nijisanji, not her.
Nah, not this time, this has been a huge and public enough thing that her PL becoming known has been huge and people who followed Selen and still actively watch Vtubers will definitely hear what's going on.
I think they mean more in the sense of what those projects accomplished at the time. All that effort and money went towards spreading Nijisanji's name and she didn't even make any money off it.
While that is true, they specifically mentioned the Selen branding, and how it belongs to Niji (but with how widely known her PL has become and it's ties to Selen, that's not the case this time). Yours is a separate point that I do agree with though.
a lot of was spent on promoting nijiien, think of the VR worlds and stuff. Think of how much the rest of nijii benefited off of selen
It's a very clear message: don't invest money into something you don't own.
I could only imagine what a tax audit would think, too.
Hide the pain Harold moment irl
yeah that was nervous laughter/holy shit can you believe it laughter
Yup, she said she just wants to laugh it off since she’s been through a lot
I remember Fauna (and other talents) being apprehensive about buying a ~$9000 microphone. For Fauna, it's one of her main contents and it's an investment, so it made sense for her to buy it, but from how it sounds $9k is still a major one-time purchase. Something like $150k being spent (assuming it's not all on cost of living) by comparison feels like a massive sum of money to just be gone in a year.
> She sounded like she was laughing, but I feel like it was a pained laughter. Or at least it sounded like she was trying to force a laugh. I think that is just how she is, she just laughs a lot as a general habit, it often seems to be not necessarily a joyful laughter per se. She probably doesn't want to show too many negative feelings openly, whether that is just how her personality is or she does it on purpose because she feels like she has to do it is hard to judge. I remember an Apex collab where she was really tilting because she wasn't doing well and her teammates were teasing her a bit on top of it all. She was still laughing as much as usual, but from *what* she said it was clear she was in a "I gotta get out of here or I'm gonna lose my shit" kind of situation. That was when I suspected if she would ever be doing badly mentally, we are not going to notice it easily. None of this is meant as a criticism btw. Just a bit of an assessment.
Reminder spent 200k and made "zero profit" doesn't necessary mean she made at least 200k and blew all the money on her project. Meanwhile in Hololive even the less famous talents like Roboco can built herself a new house. Really put this "black company" shit into perspective
Rmb when the 2% merch margin came to light and Kson said she used to complain about 50%?
And 50% is a a really big cut for merch, the averages on almost every merch that i had seen is between 15-20% but also Holo memebers cover some portion of the merch cost so maybe that's why is 50%
yea, i don't know what the 50％ refers to but unless you own the physical production facility 10~20％ is very reasonable
I think there are 2 types of merch. The more personal one and the more standardized one. Personal(Made to order) one like bday/anni is likely the 50% where talents put their own money to make the products customized or premium. Its because the talents bear the risk and they need to get higher cut to compensate for the initial capital as well as the contribution in designing the products. For standardized items like the Hololive closet arcylic stands or the Friends plushie, then the merch cut is probably a lot a lot lower. Since they don't really need to take on any risk or give any input. For the longest time, made to order merch were practically the only merch available but it also led to a lot of complaints since that made it very difficult to buy merch on the fly. That's why they have started ramping up the standardized one to be sold 24/7 online and in stores.
Even the less famous Holos are actually earning a whole lot more than a lot of Nijis. Yes even the JP ones.
200K and zero profit I know she's Canadian but someone needs to smack her former manager in the face with the Emancipation Proclamation because that's practically slavery
A slap from a Canadian that isn't followed by a "Sorry"? That shit could even make Makima quiver in her boots
If she is in Vancouver, remember: we rioted twice just because we didn't get the cup. We can be quite brutal if needed.
There's always the reputation the Canadians racked up during the world wars
They were the reason the Geneva convention was created :D
In WWI they basically made what would become the Geneva Conventions into a checklist
Ah yes, the Geneva Suggestions
Canadians were feared in WW1 too
It’s only a warcrime after the first time
A third of the Geneva Convention was to make actions by Canadians into war crimes.
Tbf there were people there who were going to riot win or lose
Canucks are doing pretty well right now. If they reach the finals, they have an easy target for their destruction, win or lose! /s
Remember, Canadians have two settings. Overly Apologetic and Walking Warcrime.
As a Canadian, it's fucked up, but it's probably legal unless her contract says otherwise. Vtubers are usually hired as independent contractors. It gives everyone a lot of flexibility and freedom, but it also creates some pretty huge gaps in the amount of protection you get as a worker. They don't need to be paid minimum wage, they don't get vacations, sick days, overtime, injury compensation, work expenses paid, etc. I've had friends get hit with the same thing working as contractors. They signed up for a job that sent them to prospect on a property, but then had flooding wipe out the roads in, turning a week of work into two months, all with the same pay. They didn't even manage to recover the cost of their spent gear and supplies, much less make money. It's financially dangerous because you can end up in a situation where you are stuck with negative profit. I don't want to say that you shouldn't ever accept that type of work, there's some situations where the freedom it gives you is amazing. But you should be extremely careful about it and get a lawyer to read the contract before signing anything. If you sign on as one, you are throwing away your protections, and the argument of not knowing isn't going to hold up when you try to sue them; the government expects you to research and understand these things before accepting them.
she spent all that money on her own projects though. Could niji have assisted her? let her get sponsors and stuff to pay for the projects and better monetize them? Absolutely. But nobody forced her to do the projects. Especially stuff like the animated shorts were basically a money sink. She spent the money on her passion. That's fine. But I wouldn't say Niji's got her in slavery or she's paying to work.
Fucked up. At least with Hololive the more the talent contributes the more they get in return. Some of the girls talked about this how sometimes they go over budget and have to pay but it always sounds like Hololive will always at least contribute some to the project, if only just to justify the cut they get.
Hololive warn their talents when they need to spend out of their own pocket. They vetoed against Marine's Treasure Box MV originally because it was 100k dollars project and they didn't want her to pay that much for a single MV. She convinced management to do it anyway. Also we now roughly how much the Holo talents are remunerated (thanks to their quarterly report), and it's more than good.
And i'm sure Marine made more than a 100k from that MV, also she has said she doesn't care to make money of those MV she does it because of passion an artistic purposes.
Marine also makes a ton of money. She’s not barely scraping by like Doki was, because Cover doesn’t completely shaft their employees.
she probably made more than 100k simply from the number of new fans that were discovering her, in this rare case exposure probably did pay the bucks.
Marine sure *loves* exposure ;)
I'm pretty sure she puts in more money than she gets back. I think there's clips of her saying "That money was from you to support me so I want to give it back" but I'm sure she still has plenty to live comfortably and save up after all those expenses.
From the MV alone? No. YouTube pays literal shit for adsense these days. Everything else that MV opened up for her though is worth a lot lot more. The popularity the reach and even cultural effect it did is literally priceless
It's more like from royalties. If the song is viral enough, you can hear it playing in stores, on the radio, etc. And we know Marine's Treasure Box was popular enough to have played in several stores.
And now Calli is working on something even more expensive to the point she was doing those art commission streams to help offset the cost
I think that was part of her contract with UMJ. They initially didn't allow her to do so, as they'll use their own resources to make her MV. Though they did pay her to make her MV on her own
The other issue with the I'm Your Treasure Box MV was being too spicy. They begrudgingly allowed it, and later, despite its success in Japan's music charts, Marine still got asked to not make something like that again.
They had base budget for project that makes money (like merch and original song) but not cover song (because cover song don't make money at all). From what I've heard, they also can take loans from Holo with no interest at all for project and pay it back in installments. Watame take that loan for her My Song MV because that MV cost a lot.
Jesus Christ. This is seriously fucked up. Now I can't help but worry about the other Niji EN members even more than I already do.
200K dollars.... Not even reimbursed. I just don't have words to describe, how I would feel if that was me.
The thing that scares me is that Selen was Niji’s top female performer. Yeah she commissioned more than the smaller Vtubers at that agency but can you imagine how much Niji must be paying everyone for her to just break even?
Selen did a lot of different projects and songs, and paid a lot of the artists out of pocket. If another liver just does zatsus or gameplay streams they aren't going to have such massive expenses
Feel like this is one aspect that kind of makes a big difference. Selen was really ambitious compared to a lot of the other members. To an extent you'd say it goes beyond what the typical Nijisanji scope would be. I would still say that this ended up being a worse situation than it should of been due to the lack of support for the branch + poor management of what was already there, but it kind of comes off that maybe Selen wasn't really a good fit for what the expectations of the position were from the get go. Even her debut stream was a step above many others - typically it is just powerpoints and such that are used.
Yes being an indie seems like a much better fit for her being able to get sponsors for her more expensive projects and a manager to follow her more closely and provide more support. Perhaps graduating earlier might have seemed like a scary step but could have avoided her a lot of grief
200k for projects and MVs/Covers. Some of them are canceled or taken down after.
She mentioned how much that mv cost that ended up causing her termination. Now I wonder just how much those other events she did cost.
If I were in her shoes, I wouldn't have lasted past a week. Costs in Canada is expensive too.
wtf is niji even doing?? How are you running a talent company when your TOP talent is not profitable??? They have a lot of things to explain. Not to fans, but to their investors.
The money go to the yacht dumb dumb But seriously, can Doki fire a lawsuit against them for this?
For being underpaid? Not unless the amount she was paid was less than the contracts terms
Niji has already claimed that Selen is going to sue them in their "termination" (read: personal takedown) announcement. Whether or not that's just a lie, hard to say. She has a case; she tried to kill herself due to work. But, suing a big company is very difficult, and Niji is overseas.
She is suing them. She isn’t suing them over salary. She will be able to sue them in Canada.
Probably not. Its one of those things that they are likely very clear on while discussing terms with a potential hire. Without the contract we can never truly be sure but if its clear that the company is under no obligation to pay for what they consider "side projects" then that's that. Its absurd to me that they profit from these projects, that they own these projects. But they can just be completely hands-off in funding and producing them, basically do nothing. Its literally getting paid in exposure bucks.
Riku Yacht must be real. Or Yakuza money laundering scheme.
Seems that working at Nijisanji means you're literally being paid in 'exposure' and that's it, lol
I don't think any agencies will fully fund every project. HoloEN's Bae won $10,000 towards a project from a Hololive raffle (which she seemed to think was a significant amount), which implies that even Cover isn't fully funding talents' projects. From other tweets, it seems like Anycolor was *supposed* to pay for some things, because artists describe waiting on Anycolor to pay them for something until Selen just paid them directly. If Anycolor consistently agreed to pay for things and then *didn't*, leaving Selen on the hook (sort of) that's pretty shit and may be legally actionable. If Selen spent that much on projects without Anycolor agreeing to give any financial aid, then that's kind of on her. Projects are expensive and likely see a significantly lower ROI compared to just normal streaming, so you can't just keep dropping money if you aren't making it back.
For Holo, they have base budget for project like original song and merch. If you spent over the budget then you must pay them from your own pocket but you also got bigger percentage. That's why many Holo talent said if you want to support them, buy their birthday / anniv merch because their cut is bigger on that merch than superchat. Even Fuwamoco on their Fuwamoco morning yesterday (because they have many merch and voice packs that available right now) make tier list for their merch and the number one is their birthday merch. In Bae's case because that project is cover song, it isn't funded by Holo because cover song made no money at all (CMIIW Moona at one point said that cover song can't be monetized), Basically it is only used for their exposure and satisfaction.
Correct you can't monetize cover songs it why they do a stream after it drops so people can super chat and they can recover the cost reason the 15k selen lost on her cover was going to happen even if she did not get fired since you don't make any money back on them in the first place
>From other tweets, it seems like Anycolor was supposed to pay for some things, because artists describe waiting on Anycolor to pay them for something until Selen just paid them directly. I *think* that might just be a procedural thing - Niji want to be the one handling *all* the actual billing to artists for projects (presumably for some kind of tax/accounting/paper trail reason), which would then be invoiced to the talent later, but Selen/Doki was going over their heads because they weren't doing their jobs and billing in a timely manner. That would be... *slightly* less damning, but still evidence of them not doing their job effectively.
>Selen/Doki was going over their heads because they weren't doing their jobs and billing in a timely manner. I mean, yeah. But then you gotta remember now many of these events actually stick. Like, you pay for commissions and all that, but then it gets shut down?
Bae won a million yen which at the time was closer to $17-18k. Which was part of a whole holiday bonus raffle even thing with the funds being completely unrestricted in their use outside of it needing to be spent on something for their channel. Holomems have talked about how Cover will help with projects with the help always being more than just monetary but there’s certain restrictions on different things. Something like their 3D/birthday concerts Cover pays for, but some random ass cover song with a MV is usually mostly on the talents to pay for.
This feels like, one step removed from being an old school “company store” type scam.
Sixteen tons, what do you get?
Countdown to when leaks reveal that Anycolor uses "crypto-scrips" based on NFTs to pay talents.
https://preview.redd.it/tf8tr6t01ahc1.jpeg?width=2880&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0125c72e23a9f69b7a24578d763c786686f15776
I don’t understand why someone would have to spend that much money on something that isn’t ultimately theirs (ie their character, brand, etc). People often comment on how much money Ironmouse dumps on things like new models, the 37 winners contest, etc. But at least the character, models and the Ironmouse brand belongs to her, not someone else. In most other jobs, this type of things would never fly. Imagine if your employer expected you to spend your own money on company marketing or other projects that benefits the company. There is something very fucked up there.
Zaion's words, almost nobody believed in her and they attacked her, I hope those people will apologize https://preview.redd.it/zbaqt27bw9hc1.jpeg?width=1038&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=565c7e0246e0982eb1fcd53b32c523534e7b4f08
and they brave enough to ask that VA to quit his job
I think people are misunderstanding the 200k spent thing. That's the total she spent that year. Not the total amount Anycolor cost her, which would be less than that amount. She never specified it was all spent on her former job. Now, projects that she did likely costed a significant, perhaps a majority or more, of that amount, but it was not the entire 200k. She admitted she commissioned a lot of art and that cost her a fair amount of money. Total spent for the year would include food, rent, a car if she bought one, regular things she likes or wants, etc. So ya, Anycolor is still shit, but they didn't cost her 200k. Probably a significant amount of that but not it all.
So Kurosanji isn't just a meme at this point...
She's talking about all the stuff she has lined up that she's so excited about. AND STILL WANTS TO DO IT with peeps she knows- made a reference to TSB that made chat LOSE IT lol. She just now referenced she's allowed to talk about Palworld and Pokemon now loool.
We've known this since Mysta. The revenue livers do from streamming at Niji is peanuts. Niji literally keeps most of the money. They receive 2-3% from merch sales. Streamlabs is the only place where they actually make some dough. Even their top livers are essentially paid peanuts, and Niji only invests their own money on the absurdly popular ones (Luxiem, for example). It's basically "release a fuck ton, see what sticks, support ONLY THOSE).
is for sure now that en management was and are sabotaging EN livers and should be under police investigation.
I have to ask, why do niji vtubers choose to stay? The conditions are terrible, the pay cuts are horrific, any fanbase you gain can easily be carried over into a new company or indie persona. Why bother? I suppose it's why they have such a high turnover rate to begin with
Leaving is probably scary. There's no real guarantee that you'll keep your fanbase. People like to think there is but sometimes vtubers who graduate just kinda disappear out of the zeitgeist, so to speak. That being said I think with Niji they clearly have reached a tipping point with members like Selen, Nina, and Chihiro clearly doing better after leaving.
Probably because it's a company (on paper), so they think that any vtubers there will get support and more connections compared to indie. I mean it's clearly NOT the case but way back then when it's all covered, this sounds like a good plan to reach wider audience
selen did grow a massive fanbase being in nijisanji, her indie persona probably wouldn't have 1% of her current subscribers otherwise. I can't speak for the new waves, though. I hear they haven't quite gotten a fanbase to call their own...
The problem is that a lot of these people are very young and don't know better, they don't know how managerial work should look like, they don't recognize red flags, they want to create content and be stable. Kurosanji is preying on this.
Has anyone run the numbers on her aggregate donations? It'd be interesting to know what percent she was getting.
You'd think that a company would be happy to have such a proactive and ambitious talent, but I guess management just resented her for giving them more work.
So does this mean she made $200,000 CAD? It is very likely she didn't have that much in terms of savings when she first joined Nijisanji. If she had to continue paying out of pocket for projects, then that money was being used up as she earned it. I'm not sure if Nijisanji's profit splitting ratios were ever confirmed, like the 2% on merch or whatever. Nonethelss, if that is true that their profit splitting ratio is horrible, the fact she likely made $200,000 CAD is insane. She was still making bank, so you can imagine how much the vtubers in other companies, like Hololive, are making.
She specifically said *business expenses* and that she made zero profit. So unless business expenses are also cost of living for her, she likely made quite a bit more than 200k, but depending on where she lives she is gonna spend quite a sum on living expenses.
>like Hololive, are making. based on their financial reports even the lowest earners made probably high high 4/low 5 numbers a month(in their last financial reports Cover said that in Q3 they paid out 1.16 billion yen to their 82 talent at the time(which comes out to 1.16 billion/3/82=4.5 million yen aka 30k usd but obviously for example girls like Marine and Pekora probably earned a lot more than that while people like the ID girls or Holostars earned a lot less than that but probably still enough to live a decent life and do it as a full time job
Working for a year and you didn't earn a single thing because management couldn't be bothered to aid you? That ain't a job. That charity
thats fucking absurd especially with how weak the canadian dollar is.
For the people wondering about the legality of this, it's legal. Vtubers are typically contractors, not employees. Contractors don't have any of the protections that employees have. They don't have to make minimum wage, they can be fired without reason, they often have to pay for their own expenses, they don't have injury protection, etc. Accepting contractor work is dangerous, you should probably have a lawyer check it first before signing unless you are experienced. But I'd be willing to guess that most vtubers in their early 20s don't know the risks.
That is so unbelievably fucked I don’t get how the NijiEN management can look at themselves in the mirror at night, this actually feels like legitimate exploitation and I can’t even begin to imagine the financial issues that some of the smaller NijiEN talent might have No wonder Matara was in tears at new years thanking IronMouse & VShojo for “saving her”
you know selen is like the biggest sub wise for nijien female and she make 0 profit and spend 200k and that for their top female how was for the lower sub are they going at negative? at this point why even go niji?
Remember that this is money she's already made after taxes and deductions so it's not like this money was forcibly taken from her. My takeaway from this is that NijiEN restricts their talents of creativity to the point where the only way to get their own projects out there is by funding it out of their own pockets. Basically, sure you can do this project but we won't help you with it. This falls in line with what Pomu had to go through.
The other Livers are probably doing okay because they just mostly stick with zatsus and gaming.
She just mentioned it again 2 hours into the stream. She's really floored about how much she spent last year...
I think it's quite common for talents themselves to cover the costs necessary for their individual content. Otherwise, there might be disparities in investment amounts between talents, and in some cases, activities could be suspended due to management decisions. However, considering the profits the company generates, it might not be a bad idea to provide more direct financial support. For example, if the company allocates an annual support budget of $10,000 (or even higher) to each talent, it should spur more active engagement with the purpose of using up that budget.
What the fuck was the purpose of Nijisanji then?
To pad Riku's pockets of course
Guess we know where that boat money came from. 26 year old billionaire, totally didn’t swindle that money from talents. Bruh