One look at Twitch tells me otherwise
Well, the main point of the video is that 90% of vtubers out there are not fit to be a corpo vtuber, which I very much agree with
and its also a propaganda piece for Indie groups like Vdere, which are just as good as Corpos but without the negatives
I will admit to closing the video pretty quickly, but I'm with the majority here who feel that corpos continue to be at the forefront, and that at the very least it's a more nuanced topic.
Independent EN vtubing is 50% a Hololive cargo cult, and 49% just the Twitch fleshstreamer meta. There's plenty of low level creativity on all sides, but neither meta is particularly forward looking. I actually think looking at EN vtubing at all for new things is a mistake, in the JP world C-list celebs are going vtuber, and in the KR world they've invented entire genres of virtual influencers that have nothing to do with streaming. Just to name two examples that I'm aware of. It's far more likely EN vtubing gets blindsided by trends from elsewhere than setting the trends.
The one area where I will give EN vtubing credit is use of the character outside of streaming/videos, especially in fan work. This is a special characteristic of a vtuber that's difficult for other influencers to replicate. EN artists, game devs, and animators are on the forefront here compared to their international counterparts. But most of this happens in the corpo sphere where brand power drives awareness of the characters.
That really hammers home the advantages big corpos have over big indies. Not only in brand power, but monetarily. Sure, someone like Filian can get together a team, 100k worth of sponsors, and months of her sweat and tears, to make The Vtuber Awards. But Cover can run a 30k 3d live every single week, and get 86k people to each pay $30 for their expo... the scale of money and of monetary risk just isn't the same. Also, the creative risk in doing something different can be shuffled into a side project that doesn't directly affect the participating talent, whereas an indie usually takes that risk on the chin. If all corpos did was just stream the meta, then I wouldn't talk them up, but the industry leader is clearly doing more, and pulling other large and medium corpos in their direction.
All that said it's a false dichotomy to say either corpos or indies are the future, we are in a place where many corpo vtubers thrive, but it's also possible to succeed big as an indie. The reasons for an already successful vtuber (eg. someone over the initial hump with high dozens to low hundreds of viewers) to remain indie or go corpo seem pretty balanced to me, and depend on exactly where they want to take their content in the future, and what work they want to take on themselves vs giving up freedoms and income to have some kind of organic support. There are still plenty of opportunities the biggest corpos can offer their talents that the biggest indies can't easily access. And big indies can still put together their own structures to support their content and monetization... it just takes a lot of personal work.
Maybe the point here is that we're finally moving out of the Hololive cargo cult era where startup corpos that failed to be Hololive 2.0 are going bust, and where corpos that fail to deliver on any supposed advantages will bleed talent. Maybe there will be more indies who aren't thinking of a golden ticket in EN4, or who have been burned in the process of chasing it. But if going indie was the most viable route for more unique creators, then 2023 success stories Fuwamoco, Henya, or Pippa wouldn't exist.