Christian Thelen comments

Some assumptions and "not knowing" here. Why VTubers are working for an agency? Very simple, reach! Thousands of independent VTubers hang out with concurrent viewer numbers between 2 and 50 (and many then also give up at some point), while a Hololive VTuber (the agency that the article did not want to name) starts nowadays with 50000 to well over 100000 viewers and subscribers to debut. Within a few months to exceed even the 1 million subs is no longer a rarity. There is a reason why these VTubers are in the top ranks of superchats.

About what the talents themselves earn, there are of course no exact figures, more guesses and conclusions from one or the other comment, but from a SC 30% goes to YouTube, rumors to follow about the same share or even 35% (half of the rest after YT's share) to the agency, the rest gets the talent (should then be so 35 to 40% of the original sum). Of course there are taxes and co. on top of that. Of course you can't live on that forever, but I get the impression that at least this talents can live on it quite well. Especially since many of them additionally earn money for merchandise, music or even concerts.

Hololive, by the way, is - by fans - considered one of the agencies that really take care of their talents, even if not everything is perfect there. Is this really so? Well, I guess we can't be 100% sure.

Finally, the term "voice actor" may be technically correct, but I don't really like it. It's more than that somehow. Even though each talent decides for itself how much of its real person comes out (and some are pretty open), as a rule a character is dead (or graduated, as they say in VTuber and idol circles) as soon as the person behind it stops. You can't just say, for character X, we'll get a new actor. Most fans wouldn't accept that. Examples are Coco from Hololive (who quit of her own accord and is now quite successful as an independent streamer and VTuber) and Uruha Rushia (from whose "actor" they parted because of contract violations).

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