Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Big Of A Deal Is Crunchyroll Reaching A Million Subscribers?
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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There's a vocal group of piracy advocates at MAL as well. Most of them seem to be the usual "ain't-I-cool" types though some people cry poverty and say they can't afford to pay for legal streams. I usually ask such people if they bought a cup of coffee at Starbucks in the past month. Two of them is as much or more than the monthly fee for Crunchyroll. Of course, you can watch all of CR's catalog for free if you're willing to see the ads. But then you get the responses like "oh, the free releases are only in 480p; I can only watch 1080p," or "the subtitles on CR suck," etc., etc. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5917 |
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Which I would figure someone with a discerning eye would substantiate. Rather than just being contrarian for no reason.
No it doesn't. |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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Well, reading other articles on the site it appears the total revenue of the manga/anime industry is about 18 billion dollars. So the ca. 100 million on Crunchyroll is like a drop in the bucket.
And about Crunchyroll as well. Since they have tons of live action shows and movies in the service as well as manga. Its more accurate to call it a general "Japanese visual media service" rather than an anime site. Of course most of the users only watch animation because the live action stuff is kinda like the stuff on Netflix. Edit: Interestingly, a higher quality newspaper, The Economist, expects its readers to know what manga is: http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21716467-technology-has-given-billions-people-access-vast-range-entertainment-gady, "Even more remarkably, mass entertainment today can be tailor-made, not one-size-fits-all. There is something for everyone and at any time that suits. At the beginning of the day in New York the dreary subway ride to work is filled with music. In Tokyo the journey home from the office is a time to devour manga on a mobile phone. In the evening in a rustbelt city outside Beijing, workers who cannot afford a night out may tune into broadcasts live-streamed by their fellow citizens. Billions of people can choose from a large range of mobile games at any time." Also, notice how the refute the notion that things are getting more niche: they are getting less niche!
Unlike Japanese visual media, pro wrestling is one sport. Perhaps a comparable niche would be an Indian media streaming site, assuming such thing exists.
The manga market in Japan is tremendously larger than Western markets as well. Even more so than anime. So they care even less for Western reveues. |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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They compete with each other for licenses, for shelf space, and for consumer dollars, particularly at the retail level. Even though streaming is the big and growing part of the business, the home video market is still important. If it wasn't, you wouldn't see Funimation and Sentai picking up home video rights to titles that Netflix has streaming rights to. You also wouldn't have seen Funimation and Viz making distribution deals with major Hollywood studios. And you actually made another excellent point. It's true that CR, Funi, Sentai, etc all have to compete with fansubs. However, if one site is extremely dominant and makes some missteps, such as overcharging, cutting too much content, or overpaying for licenses and losing money, it could cause more people to pirate content. Since one website would take the biggest hit, it could drastically cut back on their ability to acquire new shows, and cut back on money flowing back to Japan to fund productions. Having more competition, as far as streaming goes, allows for a buffer should CR make some missteps, or should their investors decide it isn't making enough money. Not to mention, having other sites competing with them, beyond fansubs, gives them incentives to improve their service. Companies with little or no commercial competition tend to get complacent and stagnate. There is a reason why Hulu and Amazon are investing more and more money into original productions, and there's a reason why towns with only one internet service provider tend to have lower speeds and poorer service. Once again, I'm not saying that CR is a bad thing. I just worry about how lack of competition could cause issues in the future. |
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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The report from the Association of Japanese Animators shows revenues accruing to domestic Japanese studios from television, movies, discs, and Internet distribution amounted to about 110 billion yen, or $1.1 billion, in 2014. Undifferentiated "overseas" revenues came in at around 20 billion yen, or $200 million. Using that as a basis, Crunchyroll looks very important indeed. You have to be very careful reading these reports. The "broad sense" numbers at the top of the page, which do indeed total around $16 billion, include foreign revenues from movies like Frozen, and revenues from merchandising, Pachinko and other character licensing opportunities, and other related industries like music. Frozen alone earned 25 billion yen in Japan, or about $250 million, more than the total amount earned by Japanese studios from overseas sales. Disney's Big Hero 6 contributed another $90 million. Overseas revenues accruing to domestic studios in 2014 were still considerably below their high-water mark of about 31 billion yen in 2005 and 2006. The recession inflicted substantial declines on the anime industry both home and abroad. The total for 2014, 185 billion yen, is about equal to the amounts earned by the industry in 2007 and 2008 which were themselves down from the boom years of 2004-2006. |
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harminia
 Posts: 1997 Location: australia |
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You're half correct. Yes, US (and other non-Japanese) anime companies are competing with fansubs. But they are also competing with each other. It's a cut throat world. Every company wants to own the next big hit, after all. |
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2418 Location: Germany |
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80 mil. a year in revenue, or maybe half that, is kind of a joke for the face of an industry but that´s better than nothing. Well done for carving out a viable niche, i guess. The bigger takeaway here is how few successful streaming services there are. Not an easy market to crack, especially license wise.
These numbers put the "What Happened To The 90s Anime Boom" discussion into perspective too. The merchandise numbers would be more interesting though. That´s where real money is made in most industries. Let´s see. They are currently selling Rick and Morty Forever shirts for 24$. Neither the price nor the theme make sense... http://www.crunchyroll.com/store/p/193277/Rick-and-Morty-Forever-Silhouettes-Tee-small Edit: I got curios and Netflix has 94 mil. subscribers as of now. Wow. https://www.statista.com/statistics/250934/quarterly-number-of-netflix-streaming-subscribers-worldwide/ Hulu seems to have 12 mil. and Crunchyroll has about the same numbers as HBO Now. |
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Puniyo
 Posts: 271 |
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The funny thing is their music subs are usually abyssmal (especially Dragon Ball Super's... What was the translation? cho☆Zet's mo let's dynamic let's go?), but the actual episode content subs are generally fine. I haven't seen anything majorly wrong with them. I believe they are translated weekly so I can forgive any blips in the actual episodes, but not the songs. That aside, their non-weekly subs are great. I am grateful to fansubs as much as the next person for introducting me to anime, but I find it funny how people think the fansubs are the correct translations, instead of actual, paid, qualified translators.
There's a free Chrome extension that gives you access to all the US titles. I live in the UK and to be honest that extension is what's been keeping me paying for Crunchyroll. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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Sure, but the point was that CR is not coming up on a "monopoly" situation (like the internet/cable service example dragonrider_cody referenced). The whole "economic theory" (point) of a monopoly is you take over the market so you can overcharge and underdeliver thus maximizing profit. Having "competition" means that you must keep prices low or lose business to your lower priced competitors. CR doesn't have that kind of situation. If the "competition" was keeping prices low, then Aniplex wouldn't be charging exorbitant prices for their media. Streaming stays cheap (and in some cases, "free with ads") because of piracy. That's also why we're getting some consolidation. As people have said, why pay for Amazon & hulu & Netflix & CR & FUNimationChannel & Neon Alley and whatever else, instead you can just download/stream ALL the content from a pirate aggregator site. And as long as that is true, the companies have 2 options: a) keep service within the range where most consumers will use it over piracy, or b) fight a never-ending, losing battle trying to stop the piracy. (the music industry is trying to do both, and you can ask them how the second fight is going) As far as CrunchyRoll needing "competition" to maintain money flowing to Japan. We already had one bubble with license fees, and may be working on a new one. If there's a true viable market for the product, someone somewhere will pay to distribute it. And if some companies fold bidding things up when the market can't support it, that's the normal ebb and flow of business. Maybe some garbage anime coming out of Japan SHOULDN'T be commanding a ridiculous license fee. But having MORE anime companies in the pot isn't what moves that needle DOWN, that's in fact the opposite. If CrunchyRoll were the only game in town, they could get licenses CHEAPER because no one else is buying. |
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Lynx Amali
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Fafner Exodus and Super Robot Wars The Inspector had some screw-ups off the top of my head. Fafner had some serious contextual errors that were really easy to pick up on a first watch and SRW:TI had some blatantly incorrect names, like their original subs for Bullet's name and the Wildschwein M which got called a "Vanguard" in the original subs early on. I know they eventually got corrected for the latter but I'm not sure if Fafner ever get fixed.
Unless you're in Canada. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Does a monopoly, by definition, have to also mean a lack of competition? Because if so, then Crunchyroll is certainly not a monopoly, because they have to compete, as you mention, with both other streaming services and with pirates. On the other hand, are the high prices Aniplex charges, and the ludicrous prices Pony Canyon charges, monopolies in any way? Or are they just Veblen goods (high-priced items with prestige that people buy because they are expensive)? |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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As a point of fact, yes: monopoly [muh-nop-uh-lee] (noun, plural monopolies) 1. exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices. And I am not saying Crunchyroll HAS (or is moving towards) a monopoly, that was dragonrider_cody's take on things that I was disputing, noting that they'll ALWAYS be competing with "piracy". EDIT: As far as the Aniplex situation, you can argue either they HAVE a "monopoly" on their specific titles (no one else can sell them, thus they can set prices), I don't agree with that, but the argument COULD be made for any IP item. Or you can argue like you said, that they're offering more of a "premium" brand of an existing product, and thus charging a higher rate. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I'm with you on the majority of this argument, but I sit on the side that because of a publisher's sole ownership of a property in a specific territory, they have somewhat of a monopoly. I can still go outside of my region to get a legal copy of some of their products, which does help to mitigate that, but within the North American market, they do have a monopoly technically. No one else can sell those titles, like you said, so customers are entirely at their mercy as far as what price they want to sell it for and whether they want to release it at all. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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The biggest complaint about CR is that it DOESN'T have a "monopoly", and seems to be living forever in Funimation.com's big corporate shadow. Before CR went legit, Funi.com had the "monopoly". (Nowadays, they've got an oligarchy, with CR being allowed to stream the subs while Funi prefers to market the mass-friendly dubbed shows, but it's not like we're seeing Neon Alley cruelly pushed out of the industry...) Last edited by EricJ2 on Wed Feb 15, 2017 3:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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True, but in the end this is a "brand" problem, rather than a fiscal "monopoly" issue. The recent EpiPen situation is more of a true MONOPOLY problem. They took over 90% of the market and then jacked up prices because "where else are you gonna go?" But any one anime title (or ALL anime really) is just one more form of entertainment. For comparison, if I want to see Beyonce in concert, it may cost several hundred dollars, or I can go see some indie band at the local club for $5 cover. Beyonce sets a higher price because she's built her "brand" and thus people will pay a premium for her variation. (let's take IP out for a moment, and people will still pay more to see a Beyonce concert rather than go to a "cover band" concert of the same music) Technically, any IP owner has a "monopoly" on their IP, but its not really accurate because for that, the competitive market (in an economics sense) is not the individual product, but is instead the wider "media" market. I actually agree with an argument against perpetual IP, but purely from a "market theory" standpoint, I don't think it's fair to classify IP ownership as a true "monopoly" situation. In that sense it's no different from owning a house. If you really want my land, I can set a ridiculous price or not sell at all, but that's simply because I own it. EDIT: While in the end it IS "all about the money" (because that's how the world works) "Intellectual Property" is not really about "property" it is about CONTROL. And the reason I don't think any one anime company will ever monopolize the "anime market" is because piracy assures they'll never really be able to have "control". |
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