Line crowns Creators Market Award winners, reveals $30M revenue from user-created stickers

Last night in Tokyo, blockbuster messaging app Line held its first ever Creators Market Award ceremony. The Line Creators Market allows ordinary users to design and sell original stickers. The 40-sticker sets cost 100 yen each (US$0.85), with the creator keeping 50 percent of each sale. Line CEO Akira Morikawa took the stage before the awards were presented to reveal some impressive data about the Creators Market’s success.

Morikawa told the audience that the Creators Market has attracted 270,000 creators from 145 different countries between launch on April 17 and November 17. In that same six month period – hold on to your colored pencils – the Creators Market generated JPY 3.59 billion (US$30.5 million). The top ten sticker sets alone earned an average of JPY 36.8 million (US$313,000) – a nice chunk of change for an amateur illustrator or weekend doodler (though the Creators Market is also open to professional artists, celebrities, and corporate entities). At present, there are 30,000 sticker sets for sale in the Creators Market.

At the three-and-a-half month mark, Line Creators Market generated approximately US$12 million from 149,000 creators. It appears that the number of new creators may be slowing, but revenue continues on an upward trend.

See: Chat app Line is now selling user-created stickers. Here are our 7 favorite sets

The audience, mainly consisting of independent sticker creators from around Japan, were an eclectic bunch… to say the least. With Japan being a notoriously privacy conscious country, many creators opted to hide their true identities behind masks – ranging from the typical white surgical mask to elaborate homemade masks in the likeness of their sticker characters. Creators on site appeared to be predominantly female and in their 20s.

The first round of awards were presented by a panel of three celebrity judges, who chose their personal favorites:

The Monsters

Swollen Nostril Animals

Okutte Itomo Ishii’s Friends (wearing a homemade paper mache cat mask)

Japan Electric Union (cross-dressed as their respective sticker characters)

Squid (drawn by a six-year-old elementary school student)

Kidokumushi

Kanahei’s Pisuke and Rabbit (hiding behind a giraffe mask)

American Pop and Kansai Dialect