>>85587756To put a ballpark-number on the 'how much does a HoloLive talent make?' question, let's go to Hololyzer and pick Kronii as an arbitrary example.
+ Circa December 2023, Kronii's median SC ranking is ~￥250,000 or ~1,700 USD.
According to Coco, YouTube takes 30% of the superchats/memberships and the talent and Cover Corp. then split the remainder. (100-30)/2 = 35
+ 35% of 1.7k = 595 USD.
+ Let say she streams biweekly on average, so 8 streams a month; 595 x 8 = 4760 USD per month.
Now, memberships. The highest number of members ever seen on one of her streams at once was 1,890 for her anniversary, which is probably as close to perfect attendance as it's gonna get, so let's just say 2,000 is the norm.
+ Monthly membership is 5 USD. So; 5 x 2000 = 10,000 USD monthly from her regular members.
+ 35% of 10k = 3,500 USD.
+ 4760 (SCs) + 3500 (Memba) = 8260 USD Monthly
Now, merch. The only source we have about their merch revenue (at least the only one I've been able to find) is a yab in November 2022 showing they get a flat 50k yen ($344.25 USD) bonus for merch-shilling (With the hilarious ferengi-esque clarification that Cover won't pay them twice for doing 2 streams.)
This alone should kinda kills any 'the girls are rich' arguments. Yes, they're millionaires and Cover tries to grease them with 300 bucks... X.Cover released 8 merchandise sets in 2023; Kronii was not involved in shilling all 8 and it probably wasn't possible for her timewise to do so, but we'll give Cover the benefit of the doubt and say she could somehow be involved in all 8 promotions plus another 1 for her birthday merch for a total of 9.
+ 9 x 344.25 = 3098.25 Merch revenue annually
+ (8260 USD/mo x 12 mo/yr) + 3098.25 = 102,218.25 USD annual inflow before expenses
AND NOW, the talent's expenses...
For any unaware, Cover does not reimburse the girls for any equipment, studio, travel, or commission costs. They pay that out of their own pocket. Matsuri first mentioned this in a 2021 stream and she and Marine have both talked about it several times since that making an original animation MV will run them around 1-2 million yen ($6.9k to $13.8k) and that's the reason why most of the girls can only afford to have one or two original songs. Bae burning though her $10k bonus in a single project also falls dead center into this range. We'll use that as our working estimate since 10 is a nice simple number.
Let's assume that a cover costs 2/3rds as much as an original song to make. (Since the only thing this saves is lyrics, it's almost certainly more, if not basically the same.) In 2023, Kronii made no originals and 3 covers.
- 10,000 x (2/3) x 3 = -20,000 in studio expenses
+ 102,218.25 - 20,000.00 = 82,218.25 USD net annual
Travel expenses are extremely dificult to estimate because the girls are secretive about it both for legal and safety reasons. However, we do have one exact number where Bae stated in November of 2023 that she'd made 9 trips back and forth to Japan. We'll take the liberty of assuming that applies to Kronii as well.
Cheapest nonstop flight (at time of tabulation) roundtrip from Vancouver to Tokyo = 1,372.31 USD
- 1372.31 x 9 = -12,350.79 Annual travel expenses.
+ 82,218.25 - 12,350.79 = $69,867.46 Net Annual Estimate for Ouro Kronii... about the same as an electrician in the US, give or take.
tl;dr - Talents aren't poor, but they're a far cry from rich.
You may recall that Kiara's almost bankrupted herself a couple times since joining.
