How hololive and NIJISANJI Each Approach VTuber Music: Two Ecosystems, Two Strategies

Article

Ask a VTuber fan which agency's talents make better music, and you'll start an argument. Ask what makes their approaches different, and you'll get a much more useful answer.

Different Starting Points

hololive launched in May 2017 as an app by COVER Corporation. NIJISANJI, operated today by ANYCOLOR Inc. (founded as Ichikara Inc. in 2017 by Riku Tazumi), launched in early 2018 deliberately built around Live2D character models and live streaming — a different technical bet than the format that dominated the VTuber space at the time.

Personal Music Ventures at hololive

hololive has become known for talents building personal, dedicated music infrastructure — Hoshimachi Suisei's Studio STELLAR label is a leading example, giving individual talents their own dedicated space for music careers alongside their hololive activities.

Scale and Structure at NIJISANJI

NIJISANJI has grown into a large, internationally-branched roster — 198 active livers as of August 2026 across Japan, Indonesia, Korea, and its English branch — giving fans a broad, live-streaming-centered pool of talents whose music activities tend to grow out of that same live-first culture, rather than a small number of dedicated standalone music sub-labels.

Not a Competition

Neither approach is objectively better — a fan drawn to a single artist's dedicated music project might prefer hololive's model, while a fan who enjoys discovering music through a wide, active roster of live streamers might find more to explore at NIJISANJI.

What To Know

Fans exploring VTuber music for the first time often only know one of the two agencies — understanding that hololive and NIJISANJI built genuinely different foundations helps explain why a talent from one agency's music activity can feel so different from the other's.

hololive and NIJISANJI emerging within about a year of each other, taking different technical approaches to the same new medium (hololive's model versus NIJISANJI's Live2D-and-livestreaming-first bet), reflects how Japanese entertainment industries often develop multiple competing formats side by side rather than one immediately dominating.

What Fans Are Saying

• "Never really thought about WHY hololive and NIJISANJI feel so different until I read about how each one started."
• "Appreciate a comparison that doesn't turn into a 'which is better' fight for once."

Original Japanese

• 「hololiveとNIJISANJIがなぜ違う雰囲気なのか、初めて分かった」
• 「優劣をつけない比較記事はありがたい」

Easy Japanese

hololiveとNIJISANJIは、日本を代表する二大VTuber事務所です。音楽への取り組み方には、それぞれ違った特徴があります。