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NEWS: Crunchyroll Reports 100,000 Paid Subscribers


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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@



Joined: 14 Feb 2006
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 9:23 pm Reply with quote
egoist wrote:
Ugh. That sort of cutesy isn't for me.
Yeah I know. She's way too old for you Laughing
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egoist



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PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 9:39 pm Reply with quote
Past wrote:
egoist wrote:
Ugh. That sort of cutesy isn't for me.
Yeah I know. She's way too old for you Laughing


More than 6 candles is a no no.
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samuelp
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 10:21 pm Reply with quote
Let's have some fun with numbers!

Let's assume that CR with its 100,000 subs makes ~$5 a month from each (taking into account free trial month subs), and pays ~50% of that money back in royalties, for $250,000 per month.

Let's say that half of that goes to Naruto, leaving $125,000 per month.

CR currently has ~25 simulcasts or so, so per show that's $5000 a month.
Per episode therefore, approximately $1250 in money that goes back to the production committee per episode from subscription money.

This fits within a ballpark range of what I know about current streaming rights MGs.

For a 12 episode series, that's $15,000. Assuming that a Japanese bluray box set comes out priced at $250 and about 50% of that price ends up as profit, we can make this statement:

Streaming on Crunchyroll is equivalent to the sales of approximately 120 sets of Japanese discs.

Or putting it another way, 1 crazy Japanese otaku = 833 Crunchyroll subscribers
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@



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PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 11:07 pm Reply with quote
Akukame wrote:
Past wrote:

2) It doesn't overly localize the script (ie it recognizes people are familar with words like sensei, senpai, -kun and oneesan).


MX Media tried to get rid of honorifics at one point. But there was backlash from the community. I don't think its really part of this discussion whether they are right or wrong, but there are people of both camps. I wouldn't consider it a positive that they are there (though I wouldn't consider it a negative necessarily either).
Yeah sometimes they are at the mercy to the demands of the owner of the source material, or instances they contract out to a third party to manage the localization specifics. It's a balancing act and very political indeed, but I think most cases it's very difficult for Japan to gague the interest English speakers have in preserving honorifics and cultural terminology. They most likely default to "we have no idea" and let Crunchyroll call the shots in how stuff is translated. And from what I've noticed Crunchyroll is pleasantly pro-honorifics (being that personally, I am too).
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Spotlesseden



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PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 11:26 pm Reply with quote
samuelp wrote:
Let's have some fun with numbers!

Let's assume that CR with its 100,000 subs makes ~$5 a month from each (taking into account free trial month subs), and pays ~50% of that money back in royalties, for $250,000 per month.

Let's say that half of that goes to Naruto, leaving $125,000 per month.

CR currently has ~25 simulcasts or so, so per show that's $5000 a month.
Per episode therefore, approximately $1250 in money that goes back to the production committee per episode from subscription money.

This fits within a ballpark range of what I know about current streaming rights MGs.

For a 12 episode series, that's $15,000. Assuming that a Japanese bluray box set comes out priced at $250 and about 50% of that price ends up as profit, we can make this statement:

Streaming on Crunchyroll is equivalent to the sales of approximately 120 sets of Japanese discs.

Or putting it another way, 1 crazy Japanese otaku = 833 Crunchyroll subscribers


you number is off. because they get more than $5 a month on over 60% of the member. Remember all-access is more expensive than anime or drama membership. And i don't know where you get that CR pays 125,000 per month for Naruto. I think CR pays more for Fairytail than naruto. I don't have prove too.

Some shows are free, mostly Aniplex shows.
You also forget about ad revenge and they also sell stuffs in CR.
CR also have to pay for huge internet internet bandwidth.
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yuna49



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PostPosted: Wed Sep 12, 2012 12:03 am Reply with quote
samuelp wrote:
Or putting it another way, 1 crazy Japanese otaku = 833 Crunchyroll subscribers

I get your point, but the domestic market has always been much more profitable than the foreign ones. If you did the same calculations for the BD rights fee Funimation pays for shows, wouldn't you get some equally unbalanced comparison? The BD release of both seasons of Spice & Wolf, to take a show at random, lists for $65 but sells for about $45 at Amazon. How much of that figure, and of which one, goes back to Japan? It seems unlikely to be half given the much higher costs involved in producing and distributing physical products plus the costs of dubbing, marketing, and the like. So at best we're probably talking about something like $15. So it would take sales of 1,000 discs to reach your $15,000 figure, or "one crazy JP otaku = 1,000 Funimation purchasers?" In fact it's even worse since the Funi release contains both seasons, not just one in your example, making the equivalent 2,000 Funimation purchasers.

I have no inside knowledge unlike you, Sam, so I'm just having fun with numbers myself!
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samuelp
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 12, 2012 12:09 am Reply with quote
Spotlesseden wrote:

you number is off. because they get more than $5 a month on over 60% of the member. Remember all-access is more expensive than anime or drama membership.

I'm just talking about money that goes to the anime companies. Not about CR's overall profitability. So money for drama or extra money for all access passes shouldn't be included in the money split for anime royalties.

Spotlesseden wrote:

And i don't know where you get that CR pays 125,000 per month for Naruto. I think CR pays more for Fairytail than naruto. I don't have prove too.

Okay, then consider when I said "Naruto" to mean "the top 3 shows". I think it's not an unreasonable assumption to guess that the top 3 shows are watched as much as the lower 22 combined. It doesn't really change the answer much.

Quote:

Some shows are free, mostly Aniplex shows.
You also forget about ad revenge and they also sell stuffs in CR.
CR also have to pay for huge internet internet bandwidth.

I didn't forget about any of that, I purposefully didn't count it because I'm trying to calculate the value of a CR _subscriber_.
The Daily Deals don't send any money as royalties directly to Japan (only indirectly through the retailer they are dealing with).
The bandwidth is a recoupable cost and was included in my estimate of 50% of money goes back in royalties. It is irrelevant to the calculation.
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samuelp
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 12, 2012 12:19 am Reply with quote
yuna49 wrote:
samuelp wrote:
Or putting it another way, 1 crazy Japanese otaku = 833 Crunchyroll subscribers

I get your point, but the domestic market has always been much more profitable than the foreign ones. If you did the same calculations for the BD rights fee Funimation pays for shows, wouldn't you get some equally unbalanced comparison? The BD release of both seasons of Spice & Wolf, to take a show at random, lists for $65 but sells for about $45 at Amazon. How much of that figure, and of which one, goes back to Japan? It seems unlikely to be half given the much higher costs involved in producing and distributing physical products plus the costs of dubbing, marketing, and the like. So at best we're probably talking about something like $15. So it would take sales of 1,000 discs to reach your $15,000 figure, or "one crazy JP otaku = 1,000 Funimation purchasers?" In fact it's even worse since the Funi release contains both seasons, not just one in your example, making the equivalent 2,000 Funimation purchasers.

I have no inside knowledge unlike you, Sam, so I'm just having fun with numbers myself!

That's a good point, but 1 funimation purchaser is actually 1 funimation purchase of a single dvd set by your calculation.
I can easily buy 20 sets of funimation DVDs, but I can't subscribe 20 times to CR.
In other words it takes an order of magnitude more PEOPLE subscribing on crunchyroll than it does people who buy discs to send the same amount of money back to Japan.
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 12, 2012 9:06 am Reply with quote
samuelp wrote:
Okay, then consider when I said "Naruto" to mean "the top 3 shows". I think it's not an unreasonable assumption to guess that the top 3 shows are watched as much as the lower 22 combined. It doesn't really change the answer much.

That seems plausible for the free member viewing ... but then the free member viewing is only generating ad rates, its the subscriber viewing that generates the main revenue flows. And I doubt that "buffet pricing" membership viewing working like that.

That is, for a subscriber, after they have watched their favorite one, two or three shows ... they are likely to be watching another three to ten.

I expect that the viewership distribution on an a la carte pricing site is flatter than the sales distribution for DVD's or the viewership distribution on a pay-per-view site.

Mind, it will still be an exponential power law distribution, just flatter. It would not be surprising if only a minority of series per season beat their MG and earn residuals. The model of half the income going to standard MG's and the other half going to paying royalties above that amount is probably roughly correct, but the number of series in that second half is likely undercounted.

The 1otaku : 1000 CR subscribers ratio (rounding up), though, that is an important point. That means that CR to date has been equivalent to adding over 100 new otaku to the market, and if that is the turning point in the growth sigmoid, then CR would mature to around 200,000 subscribers total, which would be the equivalent to adding over 200 new otaku to the market.

Adding over 200 new otaku to the market is obviously a good thing. Not a massive breakthrough or a sufficient base for expansion of the industry, to be sure, but a good thing, nonetheless.

And if the growth rate does not turn this year, membership doubles again to 200,000, and then the growth sigmoid kicks in, that's a mature market of around 400,000, or over 400 new otaku.

And just as important as direct subscription rights income is the knock on impacts. Suppose, arbitrarily, that 1 in 250 viewers of a show that was released on permanent media in the US bought a copy of the show. And suppose that the average Crunchyroll subscriber follows 5 shows that are released in the US. 100,000 subscribers would be hypothetically 500,000 US released shows followed, which would be hypothetically 2,000 sales of that show. That's halfway to a small profit on the release on Crunchyroll associated sales alone ... and even if we are leaving the exponential growth section, a mature 200,000 subscriber base would sustain an ongoing series of modest releases on its own.

Now, I don't know whether that's 1 in 100, 1 in 250, or 1 in 500, but in a viewership already pre-selected as willing to pay for access to anime, there will surely be some appreciable follow-on impact in sales of permanent access.
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