In China, live streaming is thrashing gaming and TV combined

China’s cheery live streamers – broadcasting dancing, singing, comedy, game play, and lots more – are taking over the web.

They’re so popular – along with dozens of recently launched live streaming apps – that live stream entertainers are estimated to be pulling in more revenue per hour than online gaming, TV, radio, and all other media combined:

That’s the assessment of Kleiner Perkins analyst Mary Meeker in her Internet Trends 2017 report, published overnight.

While the figure is an estimate, it points to the sudden boom in random people turning to live streaming apps to entertain fellow netizens and also make money from virtual gifts that viewers send, which can be turned into real cash by the broadcasters. The apps generally take a cut of the revenue.

This is what the virtual gifting looks like inside Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter:

Two women live streaming in the Weibo app in August 2016. GIF by Tech in Asia.

Live streaming is doing so well in China because phone payment apps like WeChat and Alipay are so commonplace, making it easy to send that virtual teddy bear to the random woman making you laugh as you ride the subway.

See: Live streaming in China moves beyond cleavage and dancing

Despite people making more per hour over live streaming, online gaming is still the largest industry in terms of annual revenue by a wide margin. Here’s the scene for China versus the US: