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NEWS: Crunchyroll Reports 100,000 Paid Subscribers


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Mr. sickVisionz



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 2171
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 10:37 am Reply with quote
I'm glad to see them doing well. I've been a subscriber ever since they started streaming Naruto Shippuden and I can say that's it's easily the most bang for my buck that I spend in any year.

I hope they get to a point that not putting an anime on Crunchyroll makes about as much sense as making passing over Hulu and Netflix for a TV series and making Crackle the exclusive online distributor.
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Polycell



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Posts: 4623
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 11:29 am Reply with quote
Maidenoftheredhand wrote:
And I am one of them on the anime only platform. I believe its about 6 a month...not bad at all.
I was as well, but the Black Friday special was even cheaper, plus I got a $10 coupon.
Quote:
CR is by far my favorite of the various streaming sites (I've tried Funi, Nico Nico, and The Anime Network's sites).
I'll never understand why somebody thought it was a good idea to use hardsubs and then pick a player that'll drop frames.
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jree78



Joined: 14 May 2011
Posts: 123
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 12:55 pm Reply with quote
Mr. sickVisionz wrote:
I'm glad to see them doing well. I've been a subscriber ever since they started streaming Naruto Shippuden and I can say that's it's easily the most bang for my buck that I spend in any year.

I hope they get to a point that not putting an anime on Crunchyroll makes about as much sense as making passing over Hulu and Netflix for a TV series and making Crackle the exclusive online distributor.


Yup to me it's gotten to the point that if I don't see it on either Crunchyroll or Netflix I'm not going to buy the blu rays no matter how good the show is. That went for Madoka Magica, Fairy Tail, Sora No Otoshino, Aso Bo ni ikyo,Occult Academy, Anohana bought it after I saw it on Crunchyroll, Queens Blade 1, 2, Ikki Tousen 1,2, need to buy Fate/zero but that will take awhile, going to buy Angel Beats and Xam'd, ordered Steins;Gate, Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere could go on and on.


Last edited by jree78 on Tue Sep 11, 2012 1:28 pm; edited 1 time in total
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asimpson2006



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 3151
Location: USA
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 1:03 pm Reply with quote
Mr. sickVisionz wrote:
I'm glad to see them doing well. I've been a subscriber ever since they started streaming Naruto Shippuden and I can say that's it's easily the most bang for my buck that I spend in any year.

I hope they get to a point that not putting an anime on Crunchyroll makes about as much sense as making passing over Hulu and Netflix for a TV series and making Crackle the exclusive online distributor.


Well I'm not a fan of putting everything in one basket. I like the idea of having different shows being on different sites.

I've only been a paying user for CR for less than a year now. I would have liked to used it sooner but due to having a less than good laptop for a while now and forced to use some well lets say "gray areas" to see CR shows.

I like all of the streaming sites I've used equally. Like anything some do some things better than others.
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zensunni



Joined: 05 Mar 2010
Posts: 1291
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 3:37 pm Reply with quote
I first subscribed because of Otome Youkai Zakuro. I fell in love with the show and lacked the patience to wait a week to watch it. LOL! At first, I did the stupid "sign up for services to get fake money to pay for each month" thing. I hate those, but I did it for about 6 months so I didn't have to pay real money. Then I started doing annual subscriptions. Either their streams or my internet speed have improved since I first started watching. I couldn't watch 720p at first because of lag, but now I can almost always watch at that resolution. (Some combination of the two is probably true. I know that my internet speed is much faster.) 1080p is still a bit jumpy sometimes. I also have the android app and Roku. Haven't downloaded the PS3 app yet.

They are, for now, the kings of legal streaming. This season they got such a high percentage of the shows I hardly ever watch anything anywhere else.

Glad to see they have a nice large subscriber base. They also are making add money for all of the non-subscribers that frequent the site. From posting on their boards, I know that there are quite a few!
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Texas84



Joined: 09 Jul 2011
Posts: 93
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 5:06 pm Reply with quote
prime_pm wrote:
Nice. Very nice. Now maybe an app for the 360?
Microsoft is beta testing IE for the Xbox. Maybe that will work with CR.

Congrats CR!
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 5:38 pm Reply with quote
I think it is interesting to compare CR's revenues with what we knew about Funimation before Gen Fukunaga bought it back from Navarre. Navarre charged Fukunaga and his partners a mere $24 million to take Funimation off its hands.

Because of consolidated reporting, Navarre never released financials for Funimation alone. Before the sale, Navarre reported total sales for the division that included Funimation at about $20 million per quarter, meaning Funimation's own sales must have been lower than that. In contrast, CR is now earning about $7-8 million (annualized) from subscription fees alone. Crunchyroll's operating costs must be a lot lower as well, not only in terms of production, but marketing and distribution too.

What does this say about the supposed unwillingness of people to pay for anime when it is available for free via fansubbing? It looks like a lot of those people who were so often criticized as greedy pirates have stepped up to the plate when offered a convenient and economical method to enjoy anime legally in North America.

This is just another step down the road to a future where physical releases become rarer and rarer. I bet there are some pretty happy executives at TV Tokyo these days, too.


Last edited by yuna49 on Tue Sep 11, 2012 5:47 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 5:44 pm Reply with quote
yuna49 wrote:
In contrast, CR is now earning about the same revenues ($70-80 million annualized) from subscription fees alone.

You have some fuzzy math there. Might want to check your calculator.
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 5:46 pm Reply with quote
Megiddo wrote:
yuna49 wrote:
In contrast, CR is now earning about the same revenues ($70-80 million annualized) from subscription fees alone.

You have some fuzzy math there. Might want to check your calculator.


Oops, I guess I'm off a power of ten, huh.

100,000 * $70 is is $7 million. That's a lot, but definitely not yet up to Funimation standards. I'd still bet CR is more profitable though as a percent of sales, and maybe in terms of return on investment as well. There are no dubbing and production costs, no warehousing and distribution costs, and probably a much thinner marketing budget. CR has to pay translators and maintain an infrastructure of servers. Who knows whether they pay the same amount for streaming rights as Funi does to produce DVDs. If I ran a production committee, I'd charge considerably more for the DVD rights because they pose the dreaded reverse-importation threat. IP address restrictions limit who can watch Crunchyroll streams. And even if you factor in the potential for ripping the CR streams and redistributing them, it's not like unauthorized copies are not circulating in Japan already.

I'll fix the above posting. Boy I hate making dumb arithmetic mistakes like that and ending up looking foolish, but thanks for pointing that out anyway.
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@



Joined: 14 Feb 2006
Posts: 3498
Location: IN your nightmares
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 6:23 pm Reply with quote
And 5 years ago Funimation would have scoffed hilariously at the thought that Crunchyroll could even hope to be considered a competitor. Sleeping dragon anyone?
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Mr. sickVisionz



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 2171
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 6:51 pm Reply with quote
jree78 wrote:
[I try before I buy]


I'm the same way. I sometimes see people spinning anime as a digital vs physical thing but, whatever I guess. I've never been the type to blind buy anything that cost more than an $9 movie ticket so I've never seen it as that. The amount of anime I purchased post-CR subscription is massive compared to what I bought before.

CR introduced me to a lot of new shows and let me watch them without having to get torrents from some fansub group that was extremely homophobic/racist and had f*g or n*gger written like 50 times in every post or joked about pedophilia to a disturbing degree. I was too happy to leave them behind in exchange for something else.
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Gasero



Joined: 24 Jul 2009
Posts: 939
Location: USA
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 7:14 pm Reply with quote
I will admit that I am one of the freeloaders.

I honestly only watch 2-3 anime on Crunchyroll at a time and even then the anime I do watch are available elsewhere (e.g. Naruto).

I'm glad to see that there is a decent amount of subscribers to Crunchyroll. Hopefully there are more users/subscribers so that Crunchyroll can be sustainable and profitable.

The guest pass thing is kind of annoying because many comments on videos often end up being inquiries for quest passes.
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@



Joined: 14 Feb 2006
Posts: 3498
Location: IN your nightmares
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 7:34 pm Reply with quote
I think a part of the big reason that they have such a strong fanbase of loyal subscribers is because Crunchyroll doesn't screw around with it's anime:

1) It doesn't edit or censor anything other than what you'd likely expect from Japanese broadcast versions.

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

3) It never monologues or prefaces with stupid notes what isn't there.

4) It doesn't skip or reorder episodes.

5) It doesn't rename characters and locations.

6) It ALWAYS keeps musical scores untouched and intact.

7) It has the cutest cosplaying mascot girl spokesperson in the entire anime industry.

8) Their booth at anime cons is super fun to hang out at.

Great job CR, here's to 100,000 more paid subcribers in the coming year.
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egoist



Joined: 20 Jun 2008
Posts: 7762
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 8:36 pm Reply with quote
Past wrote:
5) It doesn't rename characters and locations.


Maybe they themselves don't, but whoever owns Hunter X Hunter does. Which means they ultimately do, since they stream it. Name translation should be left for dubs, as accurate as they may be. Or at least be given an option to keep them (shouldn't be too hard to add two subtitle tracks, and a couple of minutes tops to create it). My main complaints here would be the name of the city and the sound character. But I think it's Viz who is in charge of that.

Quote:
7) It has the cutest cosplaying mascot girl spokesperson in the entire anime industry.


Ugh. That sort of cutesy isn't for me.
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Akukame



Joined: 09 Nov 2005
Posts: 117
PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 9:17 pm Reply with quote
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).
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