Live Cam Industry in 2020. Before and during the lockdown.
Live Cam industry sees a huge spike in traffic following the lockdown in 2020. Welcome to Stripchat, your one-stop destination when seeking the largest and most exciting online entertainment community for adults. Having hundreds of millions of users yearly, we acknowledge the value of being transparent and sharing our data with the world to introduce people globally to the live cam industry.
Meet Stripchat’s first annual review featuring the most insightful information about live cams you can find. Dive into our world full of exciting trends, popular searches, funny stats, and an enormous pool of data. We hope you enjoy it!
2020 vs 2019 in Numbers
2020 is not over yet but Stripchat already sees a 72% spike in traffic to a platform.
While Stripchat reports an overall growth in traffic in 2020 having 906,181,416 in total new users vs 537,938,778 in 2019, Americans obviously took a liking to Stripchat, as 90% more users (160,340,612 vs 84,162,712) came to the platform this year compared to the previous one. It coincides with the fact that in 2020 models spent 37% more time broadcasting (22,016,361 hours) compared to 2019 (15,062,150 hours). 3,102,453,222 is the total number of sessions done by users in the year 2020.
People who work from home added one more favourite tab to their browsers finding better way to relax and interact during lunch…and before…and after their working hours. Women were not left behind, following their desires and spending more exciting time on Stripchat in 2020 – so far securing 2% more from total users than in 2019.
Speaking about our users’ age, we see that more users between the age of 25 and 34 are turning to live sex cams in the year 2020. Younger users of 18-24 are steady on the 2nd place being 19.1% of all users.
Data & Traffic
United States, Germany and India are the top countries watching live cams.
We knew the US and Germany both found comfort in frankfurters, and India feels better when adding more spice into its life, but what we learned this year is that they all also find comfort in cam models. After the start of the lockdowns in March, Stripchat saw an enormous spike in traffic, especially amongst users in the US, India and Germany.
Mobile cams are the new trend of 2020.
Pandemic established a new ‘normal’ for our lives, where we all started to spend more time at home. Naturally, people expect better and more flexible online technologies, especially on their mobiles. Mobile accounts for approximately half of the web traffic worldwide. In the third quarter of 2020, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 50.81 percent of global website traffic (according to Statista). It becomes evident that people give priority to mobile devices when surfing the Internet, and our statistics also prove that. The number of users watching cams from mobile devices continued to grow, reaching 73.93% of all users following the lockdown. It’s worth mentioning that Android remains the leader, covering 54.41% of all users.
Besides using mobile devices to reach Stripchat, users keep choosing to spend time with models doing mobile broadcasts outside their homes, showing 1724% growth in unique visitors visiting mobile cams from January 2020 to December 2020.
LGBTQ+ community on Stripchat continues to grow showing a spike after the pandemic begun.
We also see a spike after the pandemic’s beginning in users visiting both trans’ and guys’ live cams in 2020. A total of 26,508,282 visited Trans cams index on Stripchat in 2020.
While the traffic to Guys index more than doubled showing a total of 32,159,008 visitors in 2020.
Model Signups
The lockdown made more people to start camming to help cover their bills.
Italy is known for their beautiful people. It was one of the first countries to lock down, and it quickly showed us the entrepreneurial spirit of the Italian people. Stripchat experienced triple signups in Italy during the first weeks of the lockdown (Forbes article). Both the US and Spain were up about 45% since the first week of March. Despite the minor decrease in signups in April, we see that models around the world continue joining Stripchat.
Models switched to mobile devices adopting to users’ preferences and new style of life.
And as countries around the world began to close down, models adjusted their schedule by increasing the time they stream to meet user needs in new circumstances around the globe. Even when they went out to get fresh air, performers switched to mobile broadcasts so they could cam while they spent more time outside their homes.
When seeking your perfect match on Stripchat, a few of the most popular segmentations are body type, age, and hair color. You might be curious about the percentages of models according to this segmentation on our platform. We are here to reveal it to you. By the way, there are still thousands of models who prefer not to specify this information; hence, the below charts show only those who did.
How much can you earn as a cam model?
With all the above stats, you must be curious about how much money cam performers can make. Meet the Top 5 earners on Stripchat by $$$ per hour.
User Behavior
We learned a lot about our users in 2020 as lockdowns brought loneliness and revealed new preferences. Users in the US took a new liking to BBW, Mature and Ebony models. At the same time, people worldwide turn to camming to battle pandemic fatigue: Here were the Top 10 most popular camming categories of 2020.
People seek closer interaction by diving into privates and VR, while $16,897 was the highest single tip in 2020.
People watching VR cams (using VR headsets) seeking closer interactions increased by 26% since the beginning of the lockdown. To get even closer, users spent 65% more hours (1,375,320 in 2020 vs 832,200 in 2019) in both private and cam2cam sessions to connect more intimately.
Users spent 98,595,157 hours on live cams in 2020, which is 68% more than they did last year (62,190,458 in 2019). Evidently, it coincides with the traffic growth. In 2020 we also have a new single tip record, which is $16,897 tipped by one user.
We’ve recently introduced improved AI machine on Stripchat, pitching the best matching models according to users’ preferences they choose when onboarding. Here is the picture of users’ preferences based on models’ age and body type in 2020.
Users enjoy watching live content they can access instantly. Meet live anal and blowjob cams lovers.
Speaking about new technologies, this year, we also discovered the next best use case for AI. Our team has developed a machine-learning algorithm to identify particular sex acts within the live-streaming video. We’ve called our AI “Anal-ytics” and it analyzes live video as it happens. It allows us to bring live anal and blowjob scenes happening at the very moment to the eyes and hands of our users. In 2020 the total traffic to both categories approximately doubled and we are glad that users from the US, India & Germany gave the best advantage to our new technology but they are also top by traffic; hence, it was expected.
What’s exciting and thrilling is that Brazilians, not even being in the top 9 by traffic, unexpectedly dived into live anal sessions more often than many other countries. Meanwhile, Italy and France showed their interest in live blowjob scenes seeking to have fun in a dedicated section on Stripchat.
It is natural that we see fetishes that remain popular among users for years. One of those, which turns on people worldwide is spying cams, allowing them to snoop around performers’ rooms. It’s worth mentioning that UK users are in top 3 competitors in this extravagant competition. Our users remain loyal to this stable kink making 23,140,668 total clicks on ‘start spying’ button in 2020!
Some users prefer to watch live cams being invisible.
What’s even more exciting is stats showing users who prefer to permanently stay in the role of a spy. They watch public shows anonymously. Users from India being in the top 4 spy shows initiators are not interested in being anonymous at all. Meanwhile, Canadian ‘invisible man’ became a regular visitor to Stripchat following the unexpected appearance of Australians, Japanese, and Belgians in the top 10.
It also seems that despite people are turning to live cams seeking more intimate connections during the pandemic, they prefer not to reveal their kinks and fetishes, showing very stable growth in users visiting live cams in anonymous mode. We know that it will take time for people to realize that manifesting your preferences is totally normal; hence, we hope users will switch from being anonymous to diving into live chats with our performers more often in 2021.
The US Insights
If you are curious about whether US models followed the trend of registering on Stripchat to cover their bills in 2020 or not, we’ve also seen a spike in registrations following the lockdown between March and April.
Americans took a liking to camming this year. Californians, for example, manifested that Stripchat can be a perfect place to relax and replace your regular walks in national parks banned due to the pandemic. So, while we saw growth across the United States, California, Texas, NY, Florida, and New Jersey spent the most time watching cams in 2020.
In Washington DC, we saw traffic skyrocket when federal workers and legislators returned to work after lockdown manifesting that politicians also have kinks.
The top trending categories in the US revealed.
We also saw body norms change all over the United States, with BBW/Mature/Ebony having more appeal and viewers in 2020 than skinny models. Perhaps Americans are becoming attracted to thicker body types as they gain weight in quarantine.
Americans were awarding their favourite performers on Stripchat during the Oscars.
Stripchat also helped Americans find a better way to relax during the Oscars’ most intriguing or annoying introduction moments in 2020. Our data shows a 10% spike in traffic at the very beginning of the Oscars. We prefer to believe that users were seeking the best and their favorite performers on Stripchat to award them themselves. We don’t know exactly, but you are free to find the explanation which suits you best.
Spike in US users visiting anal cams a night before the Elections.
It was apparent to everyone on the internet that Americans were anxious and preparing for any possible outcome on election night. At Stripchat we saw that Americans were gearing up for the pain of being “screwed,” visiting a higher-than-average amount of models performing Anal shows a night before the presidential election.
NoNutNovember is cancelled on Stripchat.
While many have attempted to popularize the term “No Nut November” over the years, it seems nobody is actually following the trend. In fact, more users were viewing or “nutting” during November 2020. Here at Stripchat we like to call it “Yes Nut November.” You can also find more useful information on how the No Nut November can be harmful on our Sexuality Resource Center blog.
The ‘Stripchat Effect’.
We call it the ‘Stripchat Effect’ when we introduce new technologies, and our users start loving them! As mentioned, in February, we’ve introduced our revolutionary AI machine learning system to catch the live scenes of Anal and Blowjobs cams happing at the very moment. Americans reacted to this new feature by visiting those two sections with live content much more frequently.
We hope that you enjoyed our stats and will stay tuned for more! It is only the beginning of our data sharings. We plan to make a great tradition of yielding fun and insightful stats quarterly, so now is the best time to visit Stripchat, create some lovely memories, and, of course, join our communities on Twitter and Reddit!
Are you a journalist curious about more insightful stats on live cams? Reach out to Max Bannet via max.bennet@stripchat.com.
