Voss wrote:Mechalich wrote:The problem is Crunchyroll is not making money through ads legally.
You seem confused. There isn't anything illegal about running ads, whether on TV or on streams. That many people would rather pay a sub fee rather than watch ads is up to them, but there isn't anything exploitative or dickish about running ads similar to network TV advertising alongside
free (and legal) content.
I was quoting Kaelik, okay, and I left out the quote symbols. My bad. Yes there's nothing illegal about running ads, that's not really the point.
The point is that the service Crunchyroll purports to offer: free streaming of anime episodes supported by ad revenue, is not the service Crunchyroll actually offers, which is paid subscription-based streaming of anime episodes. Crunchyroll, like Hulu, is engaged in a protracted campaign to build a sufficiently large subscriber base at which point it is quite likely to eliminate its free service entirely, just like Hulu did.
From the time several years ago when anime streaming of simulcasts became a thing (which the industry fought for years and only finally accepted because it got obliterated by piracy) more and more content has been disappearing behind subscription paywalls. The Anime Network used to have a lot more free content than it does now. Hulu used to host anime for free (a lot of which was Funimation stuff which has since moved to Crunchyroll but there's a bunch of other stuff by smaller license holders that was lost). Netflix is pulling more and more shows over themselves that never become available for streaming for free. Free streaming is being gradually strangled and Crunchyroll is part of that. It is not a benevolent actor in this process. It is better than most of the others, but it's still part of a gradual movement towards subscription-based everything.
Subscription based models are not a good thing for anime. For one, they lead to pandering towards the taste of the segment of wealthy, highly devoted fans who are willing to buy a subscription. Actually, to the truly obsessive fans who are willing to buy multiple subscriptions, since the industry has no plans to unify to a single content host and as Japanese companies act more and more as their own US licensors is likely to split further. That's already happened in Japan and it has seriously limited the quality of production and the types of shows that get made. Anime made from 2005-2015 was much less experimental, risk-taking, and quality-controlled than anime from 1995-2005. Example: the skyrocketing number of cookie-cutter magical academy shows.
Subscription based models also isolate the fanbase. They make it more difficult for younger fans without money to get into the hobby without going the pirate route. That's bad because people who start via piracy are likely to stick with piracy (especially if piracy is the most convenient means to acquire the content, which it still is) and never pay the companies jack. This is particularly important as digital file quality increases, which reduces the incentive to buy actual DVDs or BRs (I have anime from the early 2000s that I own on DVD which would look better as torrents I could find in 5 minutes, which is probably less time than it would take for me to track down the disks, pull them out, and pick whichever episode I felt a sudden inclination to re-watch).
Ultimately anime is a broadcast medium. 90% of episodes of all series ever will be watched by 90% of viewers a single time. I've personally watched ~50 series worth of anime in the past 3 years, the number of those series that I've re-watched
at all is a big fat 1: Knights of Sidonia. Successfully monetizing the broadcast viewing experience is essential for the long term health of anime as a whole (and ultimately, for scripted TV period as the cord-cutting era continues to march on) and right now everything is going in the wrong direction.
Note that none of the above changes the fact that piracy is bad. It is, and anime is an industry that has been really and truly hurt by it. The industry deserves support, and you should definitely watch interesting anime on whichever subscription service you have that way rather than pirating it. Also, using Crunchyroll is still something that is worth doing (again the ads aren't a real part of the revenue stream so ad-block them if you want), especially for older series, in order to show interest in them. Also clicking through Crunchyroll's banner ads and emails to go to merchandise sites is helpful and supports the good kind of ads and is worth doing if you buy that kind of stuff.
EDIT: kinda ninja'd by DSMatticus, but I think the points are actually complementary.