Forum - View topicNEWS: N. America's 2007 Anime Market Pegged at US$2.8 Billion
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LordRedhand
![]() Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
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@vashfanatic- Well I'd say it's not toally impossible to blind buy although I do understand the see it first mentality, that is why I'm for legal streaming/downloads and anime on TV to fullfill the see it before I buy it mindset. But there are good ways to buy blind and really bad ways to buy blind.
Good: Freinds, reviews, following specific themes or genres that entertain you (for eample I like "dark" or pyschological thrillers myself so thing like BoogiePop Phantom or Lain or Gunslinger Girl as a blind buy- which I did - work for me, others can do something similar to fit there individual anime needs. And even then you don't neccessarily have to buy renting or legal sreaming is now a viable option!) Bad: For me personally it was listening to closely to "random" forum users like on adult swim when I strated out that kinda threw me of something along the lines of "If you like x series you'll like y series/movie" Which in one aspect was true I bought Gunslinger Girl at Wal-mart based on the logic above but I also bought a series that I didn't like so that's why I'd say trust friends and reviewers more than a random person on the internet and know specifically what your looking for. Another one for me was price, often the worst ever and poorer series were purchased solely on the "wow this price is low how can I loose?" and then finding out how horribly wrong that is as I loose $2, $15, $60 for an anime series that I only got because of the price point, so just because the anime is cheap to buy doesn't mean you should buy it. Hopefully that helps explain some things. |
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babbo
Posts: 274 |
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Is it fair to compare those years though? Differences in pricing and distribution (less epsidoes per disc, mostly single disc releases etc etc) at the time probably have something to do with those numbers . As well as the fact that the early market was heavily saturated with tons of new titles getting licensed when there wasn't necessarily a buying market for them, so while people may have been buying quite a bit of anime, compared to how much was being put out the 2001 figures might not be as nice as they look. Last edited by babbo on Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:59 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Mr. sickVisionz
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Huh? I understand what you're saying, but what are you responding to in my message? If you're saying that the people who create/own the rights to the characters don't get money from toy sales, you're way off on that. As commercialized as anime is in Japan (when you watch commercials in between anime it's always advertising manga, toys, video games, novels, the latest happy meal special, etc), I can't imagine that they don't get a licensing fee from all the merchandise that's made.
I totally agree with supporting shows by buying them, but wow, you guys really have to move into the 21st century!!! Like every HDTV comes with a VGA input and HDMI and like every PC has at least a VGA output and most laptops nowadays have a HDMI out port on them. Theres nothing quite like sitting down in front of a nice flat screen, and watching some anime in 720p.
Ehh, I agree with the part about anime being insanely expensive. I just purchased 13 episodes of a 1 hour TV show on Blu-Ray, brand new for $26 on Amazon.com. 13 half-hour episodes of standard definition Naruto retails for $34-44 on Amazon. And thats actually one of the better priced shows. You basically get half the video quality, half the running time, but double the price... However, I totally disagree with the fansubs as a worthwhile previewing method. I don't think that you need to see all 50+ episodes of Gundam 00 in HD/Blu-Ray rips with 5.1 audio just to know if you're interested in buying the first 4 episodes on DVD. I don't think you need to see all 300+ episodes of Naruto to know if you want to buy the first 4 or 13 episodes on DVD. However, a major issue for both of these situations even existing is that the JPN are afraid to fully enter the American market. A JPN company could easily hire voice actors, translators, etc and get stuff out in the US day and date with the JPN broadcast. The current model is to sit on their butts, let shows get HDTV rips, DVD rips, Blu-Ray rips, and be sitting on bootleg streamsites that they make ZERO money from... then like 2 years later some small struggling US company can finally afford to license a show and do a DVD only release for something that has zero sales potential or actually has alot of sales potential, but everyone saw the show like 3 years ago (often in HD). I think that method is incredibly flawed and is broken. It's behind the times and I honestly feel like it's pretty much destroyed the market. More companies should jump on simultaneous streaming and selling downloads. Most of these crappy bootleg streaming sites have horrible picture quality compared to Hulu and Crunchyroll. Plus, you can actually make some advertising money on Hulu and Cruncyroll. Why not go for that? I feel like there's no excuse not to and it would cost CHUMP CHANGE (or perhaps nothing at all) for a JPN company to pursue this. Plus, you don't need a miracle internet connection to stream 720p content (i'm on DSL and after like 30 seconds of buffering, everything plays perfect). I think fansubs aren't at all about previewing a show. I think the entire point of them for the typical anime fan today is to provide anime for free. I think that the typical kid nowadays has grown up feeling that anime should never be paid for. That's a silly concept to them. They've never had to pay to see anime in their life. It's a shame because I know sooooooooooo many people who would claim to be hardcore fans and watch hours upon hours of anime each week and know like every show and will damn near get into fights if you knock one of their favorite show... but they own like zero DVDs but have mountains and mountains of fansubs. I'm not suggesting that digital replace DVD and Blu-Ray (although I think this is inevitable), but why not pursue alternate streams of income if your DVD sales are declining? Especially when you can totally cut out the licensing middle man who is pretty much destroying the market. As far as the quality of the shows being a factor... I totally disagree. Look at your DVD collection for regular stuff. Is every movie you have like the best movie ever made? Probably not. But you still purchased it because you liked it. Most anime fans don't buy anime like that. They either never buy it regardless of anything since it's available for free, or they only buy like the super best of the best. They'll watch a show like 5 times over and love it, but still consider it not good enough to buy. They'll go on forums and argue how something is the best anime ever, but laugh at the idea of buying it. I don't think it has as much to do with the actual quality of the content as it does with, "I already have this at a quality level thats like equal to or better than DVD... why should I pay for it?" |
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LordRedhand
![]() Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
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Yeah toy licensors/anime distributors are brought in when the anime is in production (before it get on TV) so money is changing hands for the license to do so, now I know that different anime production contracts vary so it is possible that they could sell the right of in full or have a percentage of the sales comeback in after a certain sales target is achieved, much like DVD distribution works.
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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It's ironic because I recall Hieskel countered that hardly any money is made through merchandise in North America at the Otacon fansub panel when one person (fansubber actually) in the audience stated that she supports the industry by buying Naruto manga and goods.
First, see below about who actually owns the rights. Secondly, no, their rights extend most of the time to merchandise as well, since they have essentially bought the rights. But many times the rights holders (i.e. production committees) will sign up a figure making company as a sponsor for example (which you will see at the end of openings for TV broadcasts) who then gets some kind of deal of it. Nonetheless, merchandise licensing is still controlled by the same the rights holders for the anime.
That's the harsh reality. A lot of people conflate "creators" with "rights owners" and the two could not be further apart for most commercial tiles. Except for independent or self-published works, the studios and the creators DO NOT hold the rights -- the rights are split up between the production committees and sponsors involved. "production committee" or "production company" is quite a misnormer as they really act more like mutual funds. In fact, you can buy a billion DVDs and not a single cent or yen will go to the actual creative staff -- which is unlike the American system for example. Just as bad is the financial leakage from all of the entities involved. You typically hear about about much it costs to produce a title and how big the budgets are, but what about the actual fundamental production costs? Taken from another site: ![]() Sponsors altogether puts up ~$500k (¥50mil) -- essentially the "cost" of the rights, split up amongst sponsors and committees however the investment deal is negotiated -- but only $80k of that actually goes towards the real production work (including pay)! I suppose lots of middlemen sounds good if you like the idea of jobs for jobs sake... edit: now the handful of exceptions would be the Miyazaki/Ghibli's (the large self-supporting) and the Makoto Shinkai's (the small self-supporting) out there, and various doujin circles. |
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DomFortress
![]() Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
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And here's a fun fact about business, in the life of business, advertisement venues are considered as "disposable income".
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Mr. sickVisionz
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That's what I figured. I do music so I know about about ownership. The guy that I quoted was making it seem like anyone could go off and make Naruto toys and not have to pay royalty to anyone. I knew that was way off. As far as anime production companies not getting any money for toys... I don't know, that makes sense to me. All they do is draw. They don't come up with the characters or stories or even the art style. They're paid to draw and that's it. To me, it makes sense that they not get any royalties from anything since they haven't really done anything creative. |
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DomFortress
![]() Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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It's hard to follow what you're saying.. but I think we're confusing terms here. I am differentiating "anime studio" (production staff) from "production company" aka "production committee" (production investors / sponsors -- rights holders). That is who I mean owns the rights and where all of the profits go to. Might be akin your description of corporate distiributors but even if some company handles all of the distribution (or broadcasting, or advertising deals), it still doesn't mean they own the rights. |
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DomFortress
![]() Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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Ok, I'll grant that this is probably true. Because people have other options they use them instead, but they use them because they are significantly more convenient options. Hell, even those shows which I WILL NOT watch fansubs of (because I'm committed to the dub) I won't watch on TV but wait for the DVD release. And why? Because I've come to despise everything about the channels that show anime. I hate the advertisements on Adult Swim and have hated them for years. I also think you could be right on your other point that in theory if DVDs had been "the only way" to get anime, that the international industry through license agreements would have given the Japanese anime production companies another revenue route and even a chance at fairer prices and distribution. Even so, I think these things were all fairly unavoidable, and also predictable. At the point Napster developed in the late 90s it should have been foreseen that this was going to happen, and absolutely inevitable to affect others industries as well. And even before Napster, honestly, the technology and internet trends should have made it clear that people were more and more looking to get things conveniently and on demand. The entire media industry has almost utterly failed. It took them at least 5-6 years longer than it should have to create the service infrastructures once this became apparent that it's what many people were wanting. Everyone can say that "patience is a virtue" but on the other hand, being slow to adapt, inflexible, etc. are absolutely not virtues. Thinking that you can win by trying to sue people for wanting things on demand has been an abysmal failure. And it may seem like I'm being rather cold here but I really do think it's a shame. I think that this failure has been extremely unfair on the people working for the industry. I think the executives and the people who should have been forward thinking totally got lost on this world of new physical media (DVD) when they should have all been thinking about the possibilities the technology provided them. If they thought that alternate revenue streams were an awesome idea before because the industry could directly tap into international distributors, they should have thought about going one step further and directly getting the money from the individual consumers. They would no longer be limited to dependence on "middle-man" distribution companies. There is no reason the internet had to be an enemy to the production industry. It became this because rather than addressing consumer desires quickly, all of the involved companies allowed that addressing to be done by the masses who wanted to share with one another. To a certain extent, it wasn't production companies fault. As previously said, there are a myriad of these licensing agreements that hampered the ability to address issues. But I really think this went on much longer than it should even with that. |
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Dargonxtc
![]() Posts: 4463 Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋 |
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Was that 13 episode 585 minute series a foreign language TV show, imported from another country, and translated into your native language, possibly with a native dub track and enhanced sound? Did the company that you bought the series from actually produce the show in your country, or did they buy the rights to have the privilege to make it available to a much wider audience, mainly the local demographic in which you reside? If the answer is no, then you are not comparing apples and apples, your comparing apples and toothbrushes. I will assume you are from the States, so let me explain a few things that anime doesn't have going for it. It doesn't have a wide audience, yes even adding every fansub and legit watcher put together, it's still just a drop in the bucket when talking about the entertainment market. It doesn't have millions of people tuning in every night to make sure they can talk about it with there friends at the water cooler the next day. It doesn't have multi-billion dollar corporations competitively biding and marketing behind it; even Navarre is small compared to Hollywood studios. It isn't watchable in it's raw form by the super majority of the country, i.e. something must be done to it for it to be watchable. It isn't owned by anyone, except the people whom created and funded it in the first place, and they so happen to live in another country, speak a different language, and have different methods and measures of economic accomplishment and execution. Or, to put things more succinctly. It's an import people. When will you get that through your thick skulls. Not only that, but it has gotten steadily cheaper and cheaper over time, which by all measures means import companies are working with customers not against them. Sorry, but imported anime is a steal compared to the history, but no let's remain jaded instead. Let's take an example of a popular Hollywood TV series. Lost for instance. Season 4 on Amazon United States is $36.99. On Amazon Germany it's €48,95 ($65.95). Almost $29 more expensive! The horror! That's the same price those yanks pay for a 26 episode series!(actually less these days) The Germans shall rise again to this great injustice, and whine incessantly. Well, given the industrious nature of it's people, that probably won't happen. But when I buy a BMW, I will be sure to complain, of which I am sure a reply will be offered, "you just can't buy a BMW for that little, Saturn is right down the street ![]() |
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Tenchi
![]() Posts: 4503 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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I'm not claiming that anime DVD sales in North America aren't going down in general, but one thing you do have to take into consideration about, say, 2004 numbers compared to 2007 numbers, is that, back in 2004, the bulk of DVD sales of anime series was probably still single disks, but, by 2007, thinpacks of series, including series sold straight to thinpack (as opposed to re-releases of series originally sold as singles), had really started to gain steam, with the numbers of series sold as single disks in decline.
Even if you take into account the higher distribution costs of multiple single volumes versus that of a series sold as a single thinpack, the profit margins almost certainly were a bit higher when anime fans were paying around five dollars per episode compared to just two or three dollars per episode with thinpacks. I know that more people will buy a series as a thinpack than as single volumes, but I doubt the niche market for most anime series is big enough for economics of scale to kick in to that great a degree. |
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jdb728
Posts: 77 Location: Thousand Oaks, Ca. |
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That's a very fair and valid point, but it's important to note that with a high percentage of those thinpacks being rereleases, they were likely also a reason for a reduction in sales(those of us who bought the Fullmetal Alchemist single disc releases, for example, weren't likely to jump at the 13 episode thinpacks). I would be curious to see the total numbers of DVDs(single and thinpacks) from year to year to get an idea of just how different the sales, in dollars and quantity, really are from year to year. I've noticed some people are still comparing the DVD sales and the merchandise sales and inclusive, instead of exclusive(which they are). The major bulk of the merchandise sales is going to come from little kids seeing stuff on TV(as mentioned in a few earlier posts), for some reason I can't see many 6 and 7 year olds sitting through fansubs and wanting to read the script instead of hearing it. Meanwhile, the majority of DVD sales are coming from the teen and adult fans, who are the ones watching a fansub 2, 3, 4 or more times while claiming "it's not good enough to buy". Simply put, while the original financial aspects are inclusive, the actual sales of the two categories are very exclusive.
That's a great point. Licensing fees for imports will make season box sets of Case Closed require more sales or higher prices to make a profit then say seasons of Law and Order. If only more people could understand that importing properties cost a lot of money, and DVD sales have to make up for the lack of income from commercials that come with original TV airings of domestic shows. Thanks. ![]() |
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DomFortress
![]() Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
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