INTRODUCTION
Who, What, When, Why?
It has been 5 years since the last youtaite (ytt) community census. This timeframe has seen significant changes to the world in the form of a pandemic, a surge in popularity of Vtubers in the west, economic disruption, and the ongoing evolution of social media.
Out of personal interest and an apparent abundance of free time, the writer created a Google Forms-based survey to see how the community has changed since then and promoted it via his personal Twitter and youtaite community Discord servers.
In total, 363 respondents filled the survey between December 20, 2022 to January 31, 2023. Respondents included self-declared youtaite as well as youtaite-adjacent individuals.
Caveats
The writer’s social circle may be significantly biased towards Love Live fans.
Financial Conflicts of Interest
None declared
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Joy, Rosie, kano, Sky, Camellia, ayu, lyka, Eva, Aida, and arlena for assisting in the development of this survey.
Thank you to Mochi for organizing the census in prior years.
RESULTS
Youtaite Status
Most youtaite consider themselves to be partially active (casual, semi-hiatus, etc…). On this chart, “Active” refers to all respondents who selected “I am an active youtaite”, even if they selected other options as well. When excluding individuals who selected multiple options, the “Active” group drops to 39.94% (n=145).
Demographics
Youtaite have gotten older. Compared to five years ago, many more youtaite are in the 23-27 year old bracket. This corresponds to college-educated working adults or adults who have been in the work-force out of high school for a number of years. How does this demographic shift affect perceptions of disposal income, commissioning, and monetization?
Partially active status and old age are correlated. Compared to active youtaite and novice youtaite (data not shown), partially active youtaite are much more likely to occupy the 23-27 and 28-32 age brackets. Is this to do with other priorities competing for time?
There are fewer youtaite who have been in the community for 3 years. Is this to do with the pandemic? Does this time-frame correspond to a greater interest in Vtubing?
More youtaite have entered the community within the past 1 and 2 years. This is encouraging from a community growth point of view.
Time in community is correlated with partially active status as well. Veterans may be moving on to other interests, in addition to their older age drawing their attention elsewhere.
The youtaite community continues to be gender-diverse. Significantly more people selected non-binary compared to five years ago. There continues to be notably more women than men in the community and the ratio between them has not changed. Compare to the vtuber community, where this skew is present but not as pronounced.
Writer regrets setting this question up as free text input, as much time was spent cleaning up the responses. Lesson learned.
Online Activities (Part 1)
Respondents were most likely to select solo covers as something they often do, followed by small/big collabs, then by chorus battles. Interestingly, a significant number of respondents said they never participate in chorus battles (32%). Although live-streaming seems to be the least popular activity, 25% of respondents stream at least some of the time, which is a sizeable minority.
Respondents who self-categorize as partially active youtaite are much more likely to report live-streaming their activities at least some of the time compared to their active youtaite counterparts (28% vs 20%)
Over 36% of respondents have a vtuber model of some type. Only 27% of respondents stream at the current time, although an additional 23% plan to stream in the future. The difference (50% vs 36%) could be made up of streamers that are not vtubers but also people whose models are still in process. Also, not all people who have models necessarily stream – some respondents may wish to use their models for pre-recorded / VOD content only.
Although most respondents have participated in at least one chorus battle, the majority (60%) have not participated in one during 2022. Writer interprets these results to imply that the emphasis on chorus battles has drastically decreased in recent years. Perhaps this is best for overall mental health.
Miscellany (Part 1)
Proportion of animators has increased from 25% to 30%, contrary to some anecdotal evidence. Lack of animators has been frequently cited as a barrier to creating videos in the community. These findings suggest that there is more to this issue than a relative lack of animators.
More people have taken on mix, organizing, and translyrics roles as well. This may reflect higher expectations and a more competitive environment that we find ourselves in compared to several years back. These are a continuation of previous trends.
When considering artists willing to do Art (solo), the proportion of artists has decreased from 37% to 32%. However, when combining respondents who selected either Art (collab) OR Art (solo), that proportion increases to 43% (data not shown).
Japanese and English remain the predominant languages sung by youtaite, with Korean as a distant third. Although many youtaite cover Korean songs, there may be a significant number of cover artists who focus on Korean music who do not consider themselves youtaite right now.
Communication preferences have largely consolidated under Twitter and Discord. Assuming that sample bias did not significantly alter these results (this survey was promoted on Twitter), this makes it much easier for most youtaite to communicate with each other. The revival of Tumblr that was trumpeted during the late-2022 upheaval on Twitter did not materialize, perhaps to the chagrin of some. Also, farewell, Skype. You deserved better.
Online Activities (Part 2)
About 40% of respondents participated in 1-5 collaborations during 2022, while another 40% participated in at least 6 collaborations. There is a small number of superhumans who participated in more than 20 collaborations last year. These numbers are similar for partially active youtaite (data not shown), with the the exception that only 6% of partially active youtaite (vs 12% of active youtaite) participated in more than 20 collaborations last year. Writer would like to add that this is a lot of collaborations for someone who is only partially active.
When comparing against question 11 and a prior survey that writer ran, one posits that between 50-60% of youtaite host collaborations at least once per year. It is amazing that so many people are willing to step up and run projects. Please continue to fight the good fight, especially the 7 superhumans who hosted more than 20 collaborations in just a single year.
Youtaite continue to be very prolific, even on the collaboration scene.
The community agrees to disagree. Excerpts of comments below
“I see collaboration as something that involves multiple parties during the planning stage. A commission to me is a hired work during which I’m brought in to complete a task, regardless of my involvement or personal feelings regarding things such as lyrics, mixing etc. On top of that, since I make MVs, I’m usually commissioned when everything is already completed so there’s not much of a ‘collaboration’ aspect to it!”
“…it kind of depends”
“sort of but not really”
“it depends”
“depends”
“I guess that depends…”
Edit: all comments will be available in the raw data (see end of post)
Interests
Vocaloid listening (79%) and audio work (78%) are lower than vocaloid singing (93%), even when accounting for differences in denominator.
Outside of anime, vocaloid, j-pop, and ani-idols, the listening rates for genres is higher than the singing rates, suggesting that our videos focus on our niche slightly more than our general interests.
Games, musicals, jazz were frequently cited in the free-form section of this questsion
We really like anime, to no one’s surprise. We are also more interested in vtubers than other streamers.
Most youtaite intend to continue their activities, while a minority are undecided. Writer was interested in who these undecided individuals are. See below.
Respondents who self-categorized as active youtaite were the most sure that they would continue youtaite activities next year (97.9%). Relative to that baseline, partially active youtaite and animators were much less likely to answer the same way (68.5% and 79.6% respectively).
As a whole, partially active youtaite are actually still quite active (see comment under question 14) but there are individuals who are ambivalent about continuing their activities.
Similarly, although the proportion of animators in the community has gone up, they are also more likely to consider dropping youtaite activities – writer guesses that this is due to burnout, loss of interest, and the search for better financial prospects elsewhere.
23. Any last words about the survey, about the youtaite community, or about your favourite Love Live girl?
Some responses to this question focused on what the youtaite label means
- “I don’t necessarily label myself as a “youtaite” because I think it would alienate my viewers. I moreso label myself as an “anime cover artist” or someone who makes “English anime covers” because I personally think that terminology is more accessible. However, I do have plenty of friends and collaborators who label themselves as youtaite!”
- “This is my first time hearing about the term “Youtaite” not realizing that I actually am one, so this was fun to fill out and I hope to be welcomed in said community with open arms.”
- “Whilst I’ve gone into being considered a V-Singer, I still consider myself a part of the Youtaite community. It’s been my home for many years and I will always support others wishing to join such a community.”
Some responses to this question had positive sentiments
- “I think it’s pretty amazing how people just come together to pour their blood, sweat, and tears into music out of passion and collaboration.”
- “Working with the youtaite community has legitimately been one of the best decisions I’ve made in terms of meeting new people, putting out wonderful collabs, and forging new bonds.”
- “I love the youtaite community. I was able to achieve so much because of the experience I gained there. Everyone is so supportive and it’s always a pleasure to talk or collab with Youtaites.”
Others had negative sentiments, especially around supportiveness and “clique”-ness
- “I just wish the community could give more support to each other.”
- “Youtaite community always felt so far away for me, nobody ever picked me up for any possible part of CBs, people only collabing with friends… I will always remember the days YTChorus was first revived and people did choruses with everyone. Just for fun. We need more of that open recruitment, just so people can reach out, meet new people. If it’s happening, it’s not reaching far enough”
Certain comments had to do with falling out of the community
- “On some days, I miss being active in the community and on other days, I realize how much commitment it is to be in it. I learned a lot from this community and while I am not sure if I will be as active as I was before or even return at all, I am grateful for everyone and the journey it has taken me. “
- “I accidentally fell out of Youtaite stuff near the start of the pandemic since living situations changed, and I’ve never gotten a chance to actually go back. It’s been driving me up a wall. I really miss both singing and streaming…”
- “I have no clue what the future holds but odds are this is the end of the road for me. [Several] years, many friends who came and went… but I’d say the time was well spent. Whether or not I do have a future here or not, ultimately I’ll look back on [these] years fondly.”
One respondent simply had this to say
- “whenever howlcb finally happens all of you mfs better join”
Vtubers were frequently mentioned in the comments
- “It’s interesting how the intersection between music, anime and video games has led to the – I’ll say “fusion” – of youtaite and vtubers within the past few years. I think this conversation typically poses a separation between the two but it’s very much possible and already been shown that one can be both. I hope this leads to more streaming-focused vtubers getting involved in chorus battles and collabs as they can serve as a creative outlet and a challenge to improve and create in a short amount of time. In the same way, I hope youtaite who have maybe felt like the community has been on the decline as of late gain more friends and people to create with from that as even more people become interested in vtubers and discover some of the origins of their activities.”
35% of you stan Liella. 35% of you stan muse. Nijigaku is being underappreciated. Writer wonders if the under-representation of “It’s Joke” in this sample reflects a source of bias, as Aqours is immensely popular right now and one would expect their numbers to be much higher.
FINAL REMARKS
Conclusion
From the bottom of my heart, thank you all for taking part in this survey. I love numbers. I love the youtaite community. It brings me joy to be able to share these results with you. The raw data can be found here, in case you want to do your own analysis or check my conclusions.
A few things stand out about this year’s results that I personally feel are relevant to our future.
Firstly, we continue to grow as a community. “Time in community” data show that we are getting new members every year!
Secondly, our older and more experienced community members are still here, actively participating. However, they are definitely slowing down and branching out to other interests. How can we preserve the experience and knowledge they have for the benefit of baby youtaite to come?
Thirdly, we are still figuring out our relationship with the vtuber community. Although many of our community members have become vtubers, I have a feeling that a period of reconnection is coming upon us. I think this will lead to change in our community but I’m hopeful that it will be an overall positive one.
Finally, I’m glad to say that we aren’t as maso as we used to be, though we’re still more maso than perhaps we ought to be.
Personally speaking, I’m so thrilled to be a member of this community and it is an honour to pick up this survey where Mochi left it off. Perhaps this will be an annual occurrence?
Wishing you all the best
Sincerely
Mathew
Sepia Days Music 
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