Crunchyroll subscription, illegal downloads and how does it work

Ecchi_Hater_9000 said:
When you pay a membership fee, you're supporting Crunchyroll.

Crunchyroll, in turn, is supporting the anime industry by paying licensing fees.

It doesn't matter if you pay up and don't even watch anything that month. You're helping anyway.
Best way to get more of the shows you want licensed in your region? Lots and lots of views. It's a popularity contest.

AWildIdiot said:
-If you watch one show, your subscription money goes toward supporting that show. If you watch more than one show, the money is split proportionately among those shows depending on which ones you watch the most.
" What if I watch only 1 episode of a 13 episode series and 2 episodes of a 26 episode series, is it distributed equally "
-The money is split based on your time watching a show , if you watch 1 episode of show " A " ,and 2 episodes of show " B " , Show B gets 2/3 amount of your money while show A gets the rest.

bikers123 said:

So, that would mean that a high quality show with fewer episodes would get less revenue as compared to a "shitty" show with a large number of episodes assuming the same amount of people watch it.

AWildIdiot said:

" So, that would mean that a high quality show with fewer episodes would get less revenue as compared to a "shitty" show with a large number of episodes assuming the same amount of people watch it. "
the same amount of people watching a show will result in the same amount of money because the way it works is based on your time watching , for example : "you spent 6 hours in a month watching 3 shows ( A , B , C ) . You spent 3 hours watching " A "'s episodes which is 50% of the time , " B " and " C " for 1h30 hour each which is 25% for each shows.Creator of show A will get 50% of your money while creators of show " B " and show " C " gets 25% each. Its based on your time , not the episodes

bikers123 said:
Let's say people don't have a good internet connection and can't stream 720p/1080p videos flawlessly and/or like to watch videos offline due to various reasons, thereby resorting to illegal downloads, but keep their Crunchyroll membership and basically support the anime industry. They decide not to watch anything online, but keep the membership because they want to support the industry

AWildIdiot said:

Because of how Crunchyroll works , if you want to support the creators of the shows you like but don't want to watch online , you can download it " illegally " but at least open that show's episode on Crunchyroll for a few seconds ( then Crunchyroll will know that you watch that show and will send your subscription money to support the creator of that show , you can decide how long you want to play each show episode so your favorite show gets more of your money)

Jerkhov said:

pretty much, this guy has the right idea, it's not just divided by the series you watch, it's the time

Also OP @bikers123 , stop overthinking this so much, stop getting a guilty conscious for not supporting enough, the fact that you're at least encouraging the growth and showing Japan that there is western consumers interested in legally supporting their interests is enough. If you really want to go the extra mile then sure buy BDs, nobody's stopping you, but to not want to support something because "it doesn't do enough" is foolish.

Jonouchi-Katsuya said:
There wont be a monopoly though. Netflix, Funimation- they compete. Hulu does so on a smaller scale as it does not take ownership of anything. You don't see much Funimaton on Crunchy for a reason. People were angry about no Ajin Simicast cause it was bought by Netflix.

Zalis said:
These pages might shed some light, though I'm not sure how well they address the "paying for membership but not watching anything" situation, as that's probably not expected in their business model.

http://otakujournalist.com/where-your-crunchyroll-dollars-really-go-an-interview-with-the-ceo/
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2b26ou/im_kun_gao_the_cofounder_and_ceo_of_crunchyroll/t3_2b26ou
http://www.cablefax.com/screenster/crunchyroll-ceo-super-serving-niche-audience

I find it odd that there's so much wariness about monopolies, given all the sentiment of "I don't want to use/pay for a bunch of different sites, just give us one site worldwide with all teh anime" I so often see expressed in threads on this topic. With all the growing backlash against overreaching globalist governing entities, it's surprising that people are so trusting of globalist corporate entities.

Regarding middlemen, they're always going to be part of the picture, even if you import Japanese discs/merchandise directly, as the anti-Western-industry crowd recommends. The anime producers have signed contracts with these companies and agreed to the revenue they receive, and if they didn't think it was worthwhile, they wouldn't continue the agreements.

Zalis said:
These pages might shed some light, though I'm not sure how well they address the "paying for membership but not watching anything" situation, as that's probably not expected in their business model.

http://otakujournalist.com/where-your-crunchyroll-dollars-really-go-an-interview-with-the-ceo/
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2b26ou/im_kun_gao_the_cofounder_and_ceo_of_crunchyroll/t3_2b26ou
http://www.cablefax.com/screenster/crunchyroll-ceo-super-serving-niche-audience

I find it odd that there's so much wariness about monopolies, given all the sentiment of "I don't want to use/pay for a bunch of different sites, just give us one site worldwide with all teh anime" I so often see expressed in threads on this topic. With all the growing backlash against overreaching globalist governing entities, it's surprising that people are so trusting of globalist corporate entities.

Regarding middlemen, they're always going to be part of the picture, even if you import Japanese discs/merchandise directly, as the anti-Western-industry crowd recommends. The anime producers have signed contracts with these companies and agreed to the revenue they receive, and if they didn't think it was worthwhile, they wouldn't continue the agreements.

bikers123 said:

I get that by supporting Crunchyroll I'm supporting the anime industry, but I don't want Crunchyroll to monopolize online anime streaming. Nothing good comes out of a monopoly/oligopoly if you're a consumer.

I feel like buying BD and merch of the shows you like is a better proposition in terms of supporting the industry, but there is a problem there too in the form of middlemen that take up a large chunk of the revenue.

Kruszer said:


Crunchyroll has at least 3 major competitors so obviously it is nowhere near a monopoly. Plus they recently announced plans to become a full distributor and release dubbed content on home video.

Also unless you actually live in Japan or want to import Japan's raw DVDs that won't be in your language at ripoff pricing plus some more for international shipping (point is it's REALLY expensive, even more so than buying domestically) your individual contribution does not matter to Japan, Japanese companies, or the Japanese rights holder/creator, none of them even care about international sales because it's just a drop in the bucket compared to what they make at home. If you do not do that then you have no choice in how you "support the creator". You can only pay for a subscription streaming service or buy domestic DVDs/BD from a local licenser/distributor in your own country and they in turn use your money to support the anime industry.

HecticLeo said:
This is my 10th consecutive month of owning a Crunchyroll subscription and I don't plan on cancelling it any time soon. Crunchyroll has stated that they split your payment based off of the shows you watch and give it to the respective studios. How much of this is true is officially unknown. I'm okay with this since I want to support the shows that I watch and I watch a lot of currently airings.

One thing I've thought about many times is how ridiculous the amount of money that's getting sent to studios.
Using Summer 2016 as an example:
- I pay $6.95 per month. EDIT: 12 episodes will usually take 3 months to air so that's a total of $20.85
- I am currently watching 10 currently airing shows on CR, and there are a couple more that haven't been released on CR yet.
- Say, each anime is 12 episodes long and I watch all episodes.
Does that mean my $6.95 $20.85 will get split up into 12x10 ways? 120 ways? That's around $0.05 $0.17 cents going to the respective studio per episode. That's pretty freaking low and that's not even taking into account what CR takes for themselves, if they take any for themselves. They have to fund their website somehow.
EDIT: It's not stupidly low like $0.05 but $0.17 is still pretty low.

As for me, I use CR to watch currently airings since there won't be a BD release out or anything so the quality will be pretty much the exact same everywhere, I did a little test with this and there really is no difference. And... I'll download the rest. If I could, I'd subscribe to all available sites and purchase the home releases but unfortunately I don't have that much money to spare.