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Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Big Of A Deal Is Crunchyroll Reaching A Million Subscribers?
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DmonHiro
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I'm going to save this answer as a text file then use it every time someone says "The Japanese anime industry doesn't give a crap about the rest of the world" on a forum.
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heartlessangel65
Posts: 65 |
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I'm hoping CR can get even more anime worldwide ex Asia
I know they have TV Tokyo as Investors and they partnered with Sumitomo Corporation to co-produce anime and are co-producing Kadokawas future anime titles but some animes are still not available worldwide. It's mostly the Japanese publisher isn't allowing them or it's licensed by another company but I hope that changes. |
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Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
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I forget what it's called, but the last industry report suggested that income from non-Chinese international streaming had been stagnating over the last couple years. That would suggest, as does funi's joint venture with them, that CR is starting to try & use its clout to hold down license costs & keep a larger % of revenues for itself, no doubt hoping to avoid becoming like Spotify - a loss making monopoly.
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CorneredAngel
 Posts: 854 Location: New York, NY |
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If nothing else, announcing the one million subscribers figure got Crunchy some *NICE* publicity, with write-ups in the Wall Street Journal and Variety!
WSJ - https://www.wsj.com/articles/anime-specialist-crunchyroll-tops-million-subscriber-mark-1486638003 Variety - http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/crunchyroll-anime-1-million-paid-subscribers-1201982702/ |
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5503 Location: Iscandar |
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I also think that Crunchyroll having a million paid subscribers and producing a lot of money is a good thing for the anime industry in general terms. It is cool that CR is able to stream like 90% of all the new anime shows being made, but I cannot help to be concerned about the health of other important N.A. companies like Funimation and Sentai. I want the big 3 to thrive and make money for a long time.
And yes, Hulu, Netflix and Amazon are much bigger companies with deeper pockets than Crunchyroll, but to me it is a bit premature to start thinking on how CR can compete with them because Hulu, Netflix and Amazon have not gone all out in anime yet. If the anime industry continues making a lot of money I expect Netflix and Amazon to start licensing more new shows, but I would prefer for those companies to finance the production of anime content, and leave the bulk of streaming, English dubbing and disc sales to Crunchyroll, Funimation, Sentai and other traditional N.A. anime distributors.
I will modify the quote a bit and say: "The Japanese anime industry would like to not give a crap about the rest of the world, but they have to". |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4596 Location: New York |
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I think it's more accurate to compare the Crunchyroll number to UFC Fight Pass and the WWE network, two similarly niche (as opposed to having multiple genres of media) streaming services, with the latter having anywhere from 1.2 - 1.8 million subscribers depending how close it is to Wrestlemania. That's still massive business for a niche product.
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Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
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I think CR will only be threatened by Netflix etc if they start muscling in on the shows that turn out to be the big hits & thus subscription generators. I doubt any of them are interested in bidding on everything like CR do given how much that costs & how many shows perform poorly when things like number of score votes are compared across a season. Only a service like CR needs to swallow the costs of building a big anime catalogue to attract subscribers.
I'm interested to see if CR make more of an effort to expand into film streaming. On the one hand, I want to be able to see more anime films without the wait & high cost of physical releases. On the other, I don't see how film licenses could have the same value as simulcast series. |
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Beatdigga
Posts: 4596 Location: New York |
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You also have to remember Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, the proverbial big three, don't just license, they create. That's a whole different can of worms.
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2480 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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The other thing I thought was interesting in the Crunchyroll announcement is that they have something like 25 million registered-but-non-paying users. So that means there's some revenue coming in from advertising. Moreover, it kind of explains to me why Crunchyroll has this full-court press with social media, appearances at an insane number of conventions, advertising, etc. While their growth in one direction is limited by the number of people that like anime at all (and the overwhelming number that don't), they have an enormous opportunity flipping some of those 25 million free viewers into paid subscribers. Getting Crunchyroll more ingrained into the casual fan's anime experience may be the way to do that.
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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If Crunchyroll can claim to have over half of the subscriber base of something as mainstream as the Dub-dubby—an organisation that wastes no opportunity to promote its own streaming platform through international television—then this fact alone is most impressive. |
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tactics
Posts: 5 |
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If they can get licensing for most of their shows they have for US viewers to other countries, they'll see their figures soar.
I'm not a subscriber on CR because the UK library is simply not worth it. If I had access to the US library, I'd do it. I'd pay monthly. I know it's not ultimately their fault because licensing is a weird thing but if they put more effort into the licensing problem, I think it'd pay out in the long run. If I'm gonna pay, I want full access. Why should I pay the same price as a US citizen and get access to half the shows? Therein lies the problem of legal streaming. They all suffer from it. Netflix especially. UK Netflix SUCKS in comparison to US. Why do you think so many people went through the loophole and it got to the point where Netflix had to do something about it. No doubt it's happening to CR as well. These legal streaming services are definitely a step in the right direction, and I'm pleased CR is doing well and thriving, but this licensing issue is the next step to tackle if they wish for, as you put it, "world domination". |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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I have a follow up question; if Crunchyroll has been successful in bringing more eyes and wallets to anime studios, why is it taking so long for manga publishers to follow suit? Crunchyroll only has a handful of manga titles themselves, and as far as I know, there is no other site that offers multiple digital manga series from a variety of different publishers for a single subscription fee or free with ads (I know there are titles available on Amazon's Kindle store, though I don't know how many are translated in English & available outside Japan). There were rumors of some scanlation sites going legit, but that didn't pan out. I've been dreaming of a "Crunchyroll for manga" for years, but compared to its anime collection, CR's manga library barely grows even though its been around for a while. I'm glad we're getting legal simulpubs of Attack on Titan and Princess Jellyfish, etc, don't get me wrong, but even counting Viz's Shonen Jump (and maybe Yen's two-dollars-a-chapter simulpubs), it doesn't come close to anime's numbers.
I'd ask about JPop's availability, too, but from previous columns I know that Japan's music industry is stuck in the early aughts. Are their manga publishers just as old fashioned? |
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chronos02
Posts: 272 |
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That's great and all, but here, in Spain, CR uses horrendous subtitles (latin american ones) and they don't even licence half of what they do in other territories. The only viable quality service in terms of translation and ease of use, right now, is Netflix, and they don't even have a way to look for the anime titles within their apps (not like they have many titles anyway...). The other services are so fragmented that they're not even worth looking at.
For now, I'll just keep leeching off the free streams, using VPNs on CR, and grabbing the occasional fansub releases (it's hard to believe they're still better at translating than real companies, sigh). Go on CR, get to the 10M and maybe then I'll look at you with other eyes. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5503 |
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D00dleB0Y
 Posts: 120 |
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Justin, haven't you heard of Dragon Ball Z? Sarcasm, obviously, but that series has easily sold millions of units. To claim that no anime has sold over 125,000 units since Ninja Scroll is absurd.
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