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Studio 20

Studio 20 is the largest studio webcam franchise in the world. It has nine branches in Romania, including one employing "cam-boys" who service the gay market. Its other branches are in the Colombian city of Cali, Budapest and Los Angeles. To investigate, I visited the biggest camming studio in the US, Studio 20 in Hollywood. A lot of times, when you sign onto a popular cam site, or when youre on a porn site and a camming ad pops up, it looks like the girls are camming from their bedrooms. Actually, though, a lot of the time, theyre camming from studios like Studio 20 that are basically these buildings filled with rooms decorated like bedrooms.On her end, the website looks like this. This is where she sits and waits.As with most sex work, webcamming doesn’t have the best reputation. It’s often seen as exploitation or a last-resort hustle to pay off debt, but Reed Amber, 26, explains how webcam models are just your average self-employed freelancers with the same amount of agency and independence as anyone else.

It is illegal in Romania for a man and woman to webcam together, but it is impossible to say how commonly the law is flouted in the way Oana describes. She went on to work as a prostitute in Germany, until she found the courage to return to Bucharest and a new life. Now she works in sex work prevention - talking to young women about her experiences, and trying to persuade them of the danger of video chat.Since the dawn of streaming, the porn industry has been suffering financially. As people have started watching and uploading porn on tube sites for free, the days of big-budget porn and making a lot of money as a porn star are fading away. At the same time, though, streaming has also spawned a supplement to the porn industry that cant be replicated: camming.It took six years to reach this life of dilettantism and occasional sex work. Anna wasn't always free. She started camming when she moved from her backwater Romanian hometown to attend college in Bucharest for a degree in psychology. When she relocated, she knew no one and had no money. But, like Domino, heard things about the lucrative streaming flesh trade — a recommendation from a male friend who convinced her to strip from his cramped two-room apartment as he did the same in the other room."With the Feds closing down and tightening the control on casino and poker sites, some of those [criminal] elements have found a new way of doing business: the Cam Industry. Let me make clear that this is in no way an MFC problem where I work. This is an industry-wide problem which will need to be addressed if this industry wants to survive.

"You have 10 minutes of being cute and sexy, and then you better have something to talk about because otherwise the member will not stay," says Andra Chirnogeanu, Studio 20's PR manager. While the members sometimes try to push her to do things she doesn't want to do, she is able to set the pace.Streamate sells its models through a variety of repackaged and re-skinned websites, like PornHubLive — using the site's well-known brand as an easy in with porn consumers. In reality, it's the same old site in new clothes. Streamate itself is hard to pin down. Trying to find who actually owns it is dizzying: The domain belongs to Flying Crocodile Incorporated, which has a PO box in Seattle. Job openings point to a nebulous firm called NaiadDev, also based in Seattle (and hosted by FlyingCroc). But the company's custodian of records is one Rena Erotocritou, employed by "Ariel Secretaries Limited", a ghost of a company based out of Cyprus.She started in the German porn game at 17, and moved on to cam modelling years later in Bangkok. Two years ago she was the number one rated model on MyFreeCams — meaning her link was at the very top of the site's barren layout — bringing in around $US37,000 per month. These days, girls in those top slots can earn up to an insane $US75,000 per month. The competition is cutthroat. The MFC ratings battle is ruthless, as tips beget more tips: if you're being paid well, you move up the totem pole, ensuring a snowball effect of even more attention and money. CONTINUED BELOW...