The VTubing section of the livestreaming industry continues to grow on a regular basis, while expanding into global audiences around the world. The first quarter of 2024 saw the VTubing side of the industry grow by about 8%, in terms of total watch time, and Q2 2024 followed this up with a smaller but still significant 3.2% increase in watch time.
In collaboration with VSTATS, a VTuber viewership analysis site, we are proud to present a Q2 2024 report on the VTubing livestreaming industry. Covering all aspects, such as total watch time, top VTubers by viewership, and which agencies are the most influential, this jointly-presented report provides a uniquely thorough overview of the industry.
VTubers, or virtual YouTubers, have been continuously growing their viewership for years, having enjoyed a serious kick-off bonus during the pandemic boom. Although VTubers predate the pandemic, this situation is what exploded their genre of livestreaming to the mainstream, and especially brought the idea into the public consciousness outside of Japan.
In total, the VTubing sector of the livestreaming industry received 415.94M Hours Watched for Q2 2024, another record-breaking quarter for VTubers. This data reflects the viewership of the top 4000 most popular VTubers, and while some creators have been excluded, the data accurately reflects the viewership of the streamers who make up the backbone of this industry.
Q1 2024 saw the largest quarterly viewership increase on record for the industry since Q2 2022, and although Q2 of this year was not able to match this breakneck speed, a 3.2% increase is notably impressive after following such a significant growth. 
Virtual YouTubers do have YouTube in their name, but as the genre of livestreaming has grown and expanded to a more global audience, more and more VTubers are expanding outside of YouTube. YouTube still holds the majority of industry, calculated both by percentage of total channels and the watch time for the industry.
YouTube’s 53% of total channels marked a 0.2% decrease compared to last quarter, but its 63.9% of total watch time marked a 3.2% increase. This largely has to do with Twitch losing influence in the VTubing industry. Compared to last quarter, Twitch’s percentage of the industry’s watch time has fallen by 6%.
This may well have to do with Twitch’s exit from South Korea. Twitch officially left the country during Q1 of this year, and our Q2 report accurately reflects the landscape of the current industry now that Twitch is out of the picture for the country. Prior to Twitch’s exit, the South Korean VTuber sector of the platform was growing significantly. Now, all of this new streamers have had to go elsewhere.
Korean livestreaming platforms enjoyed significant growth to their watch time for this quarter, with AfreecaTV more than doubling their watch time compared to Q1 2024. CHZZK grew significantly too, increasing their watch time by almost 1% compared to last quarter. For the newly launched livestreaming platform, this marks their first of many steps to finding a place in the VTubing industry for themselves.
The ever-true axiom of the VTuber industry: VTubers are largely female creators. This has been true since the industry’s inception, and not much has changed. Female creators make up 69.5% of the top 4000 VTubers, which actually marks a slight increase compared to last quarter.
Across past years, the male section of the community has been growing, too. Although the female side of the community grew in Q2 2024, so did the male side. This seemingly paradoxical statement is due to organization channels, which fell by 0.8% compared to last quarter. The “Others” category reflects non-binary creators and Babinku, which are male streamers who present as female on broadcast, through female avatars and potentially voice changers.
In regard to the nationality of the top 4000 VTubers, Japan once again lost a slight portion of their majority. Japan’s share of VTubers for this quarter fell by 0.4%, although they are still the majority with 52.2% of the industry’s creators. South Korea, which was quickly emerging as a potential rival for the US, has fallen back slightly this quarter. The country holds 3.2% of the industry’s creators, but this marks a 1.7% decrease compared to last quarter. As the streamers affected by Twitch’s departure find new homes in the future, South Korea’s share of the market may rise again.
Aside from these two countries, the USA, Canada, Taiwan, the UK, Australia, and Germany all recorded growth compared to the previous quarter. Indonesia enjoyed significant growth for the quarter, a more than 192.4% increase in watch time for the quarter and a 19.6% in channels. This is largely due to VShojo’s newest debutant, MichiMochievee, who not only critically influenced the country’s VTuber viewership, but has perhaps also inspired more Indonesians to join the party.
Speaking of VTubing agencies, VShojo remains one of the industry’s most popular agencies, despite their small roster compared to other agencies in the picture. VShojo and ISEGYE IDOL contributed 3.7% and 3.4% of the industry’s total watch time, respectively, despite having only 23 channels spread between them. These two agencies are the highest-performing in the industry, when their watch time is compared to the amount of channels they have operating for them.
Aside from these two, Independent VTubers maintained the largest share of the industry. Although Independent VTubers’ watch time did not increase much compared to the previous quarter, Streams Charts recorded 7.6% more Independent VTuber channels compared to last quarter. Hololive is still the industry’s most influential VTuber agency, contributing 22.6% to the industry’s total watch time.
NIJISANJI was close behind with 19.6% of the total watch time. NIJISANJI’s massive watch time was largely due to them having 196 individual channels operating under their brand throughout Q2 2024, significantly more than the agency with the next-most channels, hololive with 97. When this data is weighted by the amount of channels each agency has, NIJISANJI was less influential than Virtual eSports Project!, VShojo, and Accelers.
Quite surprising, the most-watched VTuber for Q2 of this year was a male creator, Kuzuha Channel. He, and NIJISANJI’s affiliated streamers in general, held some Grand Theft Auto V streams towards the end of the quarter. These GTA V streams which were particularly well-watched, and in total he received 10.3M Hours Watched, the only VTuber to break the 8 figure mark.
Last quarter, 叶ちゃんねる (Kanae Channel) was the most-watched creator, but this time he had to settle for third place with 9.28M HW. Across both Twitch and YouTube Live, Kanae is one of VTubing’s most popular creators, and the NIJISANJI streamer fell only behind Kuzuha, a fellow NIJISANJI streamer, and hololive’s most popular creator.
Pekora Ch. 兎田ぺこら was VTubing’s second-most-watched creator of the quarter, and the most-watched female VTuber for the period. In total, she received 9.68M HW. Pekora was unbeatably consistent throughout the quarter, streaming almost every day on YouTube Live. Her high watch time was due to her consistent and regularly highly-watched content, with her most-watched content being gaming streams of Cuphead and a new DragonBall Z game.
She also held a special stream on April 1 featuring her mother, which received 181K PV, becoming her second-most popular broadcast ever. Despite the high peak viewership, the stream only generated a third of the watch time of some of her most-watched gaming broadcasts for the quarter, due to the stream only lasting 50 minutes. Nevertheless, this was the most popular VTuber stream of the quarter by peak concurrent viewership.
Ironmouse was the only English-speaking creator on this list, and the Puerto Rican creator was the fifth-most-watched VTuber of Q2 2024, with 6.12M Hours Watched. She held multiple marathon streams throughout the end of June, which naturally achieved high watch time thanks to their 45-hour run duration, but her most popular content of the quarter was actually her playing Rust with Twitch Drops enabled. Drops are a sure-fire way for streamers and game developers to increase viewership, and Ironmouse was one of the few VTubers to make use of Drops throughout the quarter.
Aside from these creators, the most-watched ranking was dominated by hololive creators. Miko Ch. さくらみこ, Aqua Ch. 湊あくあ, Koyori ch. 博衣こより - holoX -, and Subaru Ch. 大空スバル all represented hololive for the quarter, achieving millions of Hours Watched. Miko was the most popular of these four with 6.99M Hours Watched, and she would have ranked much higher on this ranking if she only streamed more. Miko was the VTuber with the lowest Airtime in this ranking, at 241 hours broadcasted throughout the quarter.
A South Korean VTuber, 고세구! (gosegu), ranked in ninth-place with 4.54M Hours Watched. A South Korean streamer ranking so highly in the VTubing industry is an oddity, and also a testament to the growth of the South Korean sector. Part of ISEGYE IDOL, she was the only Korean VTuber to rank among this most-watched creators, and the only representative of AfreecaTV. The entire ISEGYE IDOL squad moved to AfreecaTV once Twitch exited from South Korea, and their influence has since been the key for Afreeca’s VTuber section growth.
Last but not least, ローレン・イロアス / Lauren Iroas【にじさんじ】 of NIJISANJI took the final place of our ranking with 3.87M HW. He reached this spot largely thanks to his Grand Theft Auto V streams, which have been hugely popular, as streamers can interact with one another in many different ways through the title.
Outside of Asia, Ironmouse reigned supreme. The Puerto Rican VTuber is one of the few non-Japanese VTubers who can compete with the watch time of the Japanese titans, and she led the Western VTuber audience.
Aside from the mouse, Zentreya was the next-most-watched non-Asian VTuber with 2.74M Hours Watched. Just like ironmouse, Zentreya is one of VShojo’s creators, and the agency is clearly dominant in the Western sphere. Aside from these two creators, henyathegenius and MichiMochievee also represented VShojo in this ranking.
MichiMochievee, VShojo’s newest and sole debutant of 2024 earned her spot on this ranking with 1.7M Hours Watched. The Indonesian streamer has enjoyed a wildly successful debut since the beginning of Q2, and in her first quarter alone, she already ranks as the sixth-most-watched English-speaking VTuber globally. For henya, her most influential Q2 broadcast for watch time was her special one year anniversary stream, which received 87.7K HW. In total, she received 1.96M Hours Watched for Q2 of this year.
Koseki Bijou Ch. hololive-EN, Takanashi Kiara Ch. hololive-EN, and IRyS Ch. hololive-EN are all part of hololive’s English-speaking division. IRyS Ch. hololive-EN and Takanashi Kiara Ch. hololive-EN ranked highly despite their low Airtime compared to other streamers. Although both streamers generally held quite short broadcasts, their average concurrent viewerships were high enough to earn the ninth and tenth spots here.
Worth noting, the nationality of hololive English streamers are usually not public, and therefore they are all marked as Japanese under our database. Koseki’s Monster Hunter streams were particularly popular, although not much more popular than her regular content.
AdmiralBahroo is often a contested entry in our statistics, with some VTubing fans claiming the American is not a real VTuber. However, as a streamer who consistently uses a virtual avatar, he fits the bill. The American received 1.91M Hours Watched and took the final spot of the podium here, edging out many other American compatriots.
Filian is a more traditional VTuber with an entire full-body rig, meaning she can have her virtual model reflect her entire full-body movements. She received 1.6M HW, coming out ahead of Sinder who received 1.52M HW.
Sinder is an independent VTuber from North America, and throughout June she held a subathon which led to many successive 40-hour streams. These broadcasts were enough to rank her ahead of a pair of hololive English creators, and far ahead of the vast majority of the English-speaking side of the VTubing industry.
Looking towards Average Viewers rather than Hours Watched, we can present a more stable ranking. Hours Watched can be drastically affected by the amount of time streamers spend livestreaming, so this Average Viewers metric allows us to fairly analyse each creator’s viewership by the normal average amount of concurrent viewers they attract to their livestreams.
In this alternate ranking, Pekora led the way ahead of Kuzuha with 33.4K AV. Hololive creators generally ranked much higher on this ranking compared to the Hours Watched ranking, and many other Hololive creators just missed out on this ranking, failing to complete the 50 hours of broadcasting time requirement, which we require to weed out unstable data. Marine, Suisei, and Gawr Gura of Hololive would have all ranked highly on this list, if they had managed to reach 50 hours of broadcasting time for the quarter.
The only creators on this ranking we have not yet seen were more hololive-affiliated streamers, AZKi Channel and Korone Ch. 戌神ころね. The former is art VTuber part singer and received her 14.1K AV thanks to boosts in viewership from her musical broadcasts, which attracted far more eyes than her other gaming-related broadcasts. She has recently made the jump into gaming broadcasts instead of purely musical content, but the latter continues to draw much more viewers for her.
Korone received her high average viewership throughout the entire quarter. The streamer is live less often than her competitors, and in May she even took a full week off from broadcasting. Her most popular content by average viewership were collaborative streams with other VTubers, and her celebration of her five-year anniversary with hololive.
Rather than looking towards established leaders of the industry, Streams Charts can also have a look at some of the industry’s fastest-growing creators thanks to our Followers Gain metric. These creators were led at the top by Japan’s 河崎 翆 ch / Kawasaki Sui ch., and independent VTuber who has been active for years. Her streams throughout May were particularly well-watched, and she received 370K Followers Gained for the quarter, although her viewership was much lower than other streamers following behind.
Three hololive English streamers in a row followed the leading streamer: Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame Ch. hololive-EN, Raora Panthera Ch. hololive-EN, and Cecilia Immergreen Ch. hololive-EN. All of these three creators debuted on June 23, and quickly received hundreds of thousands of new followers in only a week. Raora Panthera’s debut stream was extremely popular, reaching over 109.5K concurrent viewers, and Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame also reached over 100,000 concurrent viewers for her debut.
Next up was Gingitsune Gehenna【AKA Virtual】, leading far ahead of his coworker and compatriot Harris Caine【AKA Virtual】. AKA Virtual leads the way for Indonesia, with the majority of the country’s fastest-growing creators affiliated with the agency. Both Indonesian streamers have experienced a noticeable uptick in viewership since the start of the year, with their following growing as their average viewership does too.
Gigi Murin Ch. hololive-EN and Suisei Channel followed the leading AKA Virtual creator, two more hololive creators back to back. Gigi also debuted alongside the other hololive English creators in this ranking, but her 224K Followers Gain fell behind the other debutants, who enjoyed a more successful end to June. Suisui Channel, on the other hand, has been an established top streamer for years, and regularly ranks as one of the top VTubers of the year. The hololive streamer received 200K new Followers during the quarter, which was boosted by a new song she released in March, and has since gained over 67M views on her YouTube channel.
Lastly, ルンルン / Lunlun【にじさんじ】 and 千燈ゆうひ finished off our rankings. The latter is a new debutant with VSPO!, and since her debut she has found a sizable audience for her streams, which include covering of League of Legends esports matches. しぐれうい designed her character, who also illustrated the design for Subaru Ch. 大空スバル.
Lunlun is another debutant, but this time with NIJISANJI as an official mascot for the agency. Since debuting on June 22, they achieved more than 12K Average Viewers for the remainder of the quarter, particularly impressive for a newcomer to the streaming industry.
