How to fix the industry, part 5
CCY weighs in
Yes indeed, we’re up to part 5, and almost done. We’re starting to see some repeating themes in these answers and the comments, so I’m going to wrap everything up with what we’ve learned at the end. And then the whole world will be solid, right? Yeah, essentially what I’ve done is create that bunch of old men sitting around the garage in lawn chairs fixing the world’s problems while drinking Keystone out of a can. My latest virtual old fart, CCY, writes the site Mega Megane Moe (which is a surprisingly descriptive name) and was an early supporter of my corner of the internet.
In typical fashion, CCY’s response consists of a dam-break of ideas:
What I’ve seen so far from the responses is pretty much spot on one of my thoughts: the “FANSUBS BAD” attitude that the industry for the most part holds needs to change. True, there are some unscrupulous people out there, and illegal subs / torrents do damage sales, but limiting the amount of ways to get anime out there (or attempting to) by trying to be the sole provider won’t fix the problem.
I liken it to Whack-A-Mole. You slam the hammer down on one fansub group and two more pop up in different places. Perhaps it’s a bit mean of me to say this, but you’re not going to stop pirates, at least not without going Odex and alienating the entire fanbase. Just look at video games, movies, other TV shows; stopping a force like BitTorrent is something beyond the scope of any company today.
Rather, I think a focus on more positive solutions would work better than trying to crack down on the negatives, at least for the time being. People like fansubs because they’re fast and free, and dislike official releases because often they are neither.
Idealistically what I would love to see in effect, is some sort of ad-supported (but otherwise free) streaming or download mechanism, similar to the Anime Network online streaming from a few months ago. Bookend the videos with ads, place banners above or below the anime, whatever, as long as it’s not too intrusive. It seems to be a win-win situation, as long as it can generate enough revenue or even just any profit at all.
What some companies like Gonzo are doing right now with same-day paid downloads is a good stop-gap, but a majority of anime viewers can’t take advantage of this, if you consider that many are teenagers with little to no ability to pay for things online. Taking advantage of this massive audience will be the big challenge for the industry.
I love the idea of ad-supported content. As someone who works on the internet, I’m familiar with that (ad-supported content puts food in my mouth), and most of us are probably also familiar with the success of Hulu. But there are a couple things that are potentially problematic with that. The big one being, if there really are such a significant number of penniless teenagers watching, the CPM on those ads would be ridiculously small and advertisement could never compensate in the way Hulu’s network-backed system does.
Thing is, I’m not certain that’s true. Buyers of anime have been younger folks, the kind with no rent to pay, textbooks to buy, kids to feed, etc. who don’t have to budget 50 bucks for a DVD series out of all those other more “important” costs.
One problem here is that we’ve made a lot of assumptions in every installment without really having access to the kind of hard data that could drive real decisions. But I’m not sure if that data exists — there are no metrics on bittorrents, although someone like Crunchyroll may have some age metrics.
But CCY’s overarching point is the same as Kabitzin’s: finger-pointing isn’t constructive. Instead of trying to resist a changing market, roll with it and capitalize on it.
Ad-supported stuff is great, but at the same time it doesn’t always work. Looking at the various revenue models, ad-supported broadcasts have some limitations which makes it difficult to work with most anime that we know of. Namely, it’s hard to make enough money to justify it.
And that’s not even going into the problem with advertising itself. For example, who is going to pay to get their advertisement in a segment of anime? Do broadcasters have the data that can solicit them the right advertisers? That’s on top of the general problem with digital delivery and ad-supported content in those channel, and things are still in an early stage.
There are any number of ways to work around this. Ads can be used to subsidize a subscription cost. Omo brings up good points, but all it takes is one company to really get it right so that everyone else can copy the model.
And one thing I want to address: fansubs are not fast. They are generally faster than official releases (by several orders of magnitude), but the truth of the matter is that you are still about a week behind the raws, even with the best of fansub groups.
Pizza Hut
Speaking of speed, Xam’d subs are faster than even raws! It’s not the first time ever but it probably is a first time ever for a TV-anime-like anime series.
All of that is to just say, yes, if companies wanted to, they can release stuff and get money for it in a way that satisfies fansub viewers. The question is how to make it work. And for us the question is also “is it even feasible”? My opinion is that it’s not feasible with an ad model right this moment. Unless you are Pizza Hut.
>What some companies like Gonzo are doing right now with same-day paid downloads is a good stop-gap, but a majority of anime viewers can’t take advantage of this, if you consider that many are teenagers with little to no ability to pay for things online. Taking advantage of this massive audience will be the big challenge for the industry.
Teenagers have TONS of spending money, though. That’s one of the largest markets today, a multi-billion dollar industry. Designer clothes, sneakers, MTV, Playstations…these are the sorts of things teenagers spend money on frivilously while pirating anime.
Sorry, but if you want to make an expensive and hard to produce product like animation, it needs to be actually paid for. Anime studio’s won’t get anything out of targetting an audience that has no money, and, even if they did, would be too self-entitled to actually pay for anything. If we see a rise of moe, non-general appeal anime in the future days, it’s not going to be because “moe is cheaper to make”…it’s because moe otaku fans care deeply enough about their anime to actually pay for and support it.
This makes me jealous of your Playstation. At any rate, I share your skepticism but it can’t be ruled out. Like I said, ad-supported content pays my checks and as Kabitzin says, it only takes one right move to change everything. No one would have thought Hulu was possible just a couple years ago either.
Anonymous, like I said in the post, I don’t think I buy the poor-teenagers angle either. I bought a lot of records, CDs, movies, etc. when I was a teenager with no rent, mortgage, car, bills, etc. etc. But the fact that they pirate anyway doesn’t negate them as customers, especially in an ad-supported model. Advertisers LOVE to get in front of that internet-savvy, spendy-spendy young demographic, so if they’re not paying for the Gonzo-style downloads and streams, get them that way.
I can’t see advertising working. Using the stats that Crunchyroll gave at their AX speech, only 1/3 of the viewers are in the US, the average age is 21 (and nobody is older than 34), and people only watch for about 15 minutes. Let’s say a video gets about 100k views. I’m not seeing a “views” count on Crunchyroll for any videos (I checked Strike Witches and Druaga), so that number comes from one of the recent episodes of Macross Frontier which had about that many downloads at scarywater.
Immediately throw out 2/3s of those for not being in the US. Down to about 33k. Then throw out 2/3s of those as teenagers with no money. Down to about 10k. Then, since the average person doesn’t necessarily watch the whole thing, let’s say that the average viewer only watches 1 of the 3 ads (basing this on how Hulu spaces its ads).
I also crunched the numbers on my own spending, and even after paying the (crazy NYC inflated) bills and my student loan, I’m making still making 20% more than I had been before any expenses as a student from part-time work. And of course, I still had expenses as a student, like food, books, and transportation.
Damn, can’t edit. Anyway, the other thing that I wanted to bring up is that “teenagers” is also a really broad age range. In New York anyway, I don’t think you can work until you’re 15 and you can’t drive until 17 (making it harder to work). For a while, what teenagers are really spending is their parents’ money.
Ad-driven model won’t work right now – even most reports has stated that online ad revenue isn’t going to really take off for another couple of years (2010-11), and most (all?) of that money isn’t going to go into anime, here in Japan the ads on TV anime are just ads paid for by the producers of the same anime – it’s self-advertising. There is hardly any advertising value in most anime even in its homeland. Things like Code Geass is like the exception of exceptions.
Also even when sponsership does get rolled in somehow, what Pizza Hut thinks is ok to be associated with in Japan doesn’t apply to what Pizza Hut in America thinks (didn’t they edit out the Pizza Hut reference for Code Geass for American release?), so that’s another huge hurdle to jump if you want to do some sort of simultaneous release.
It’s really easy to just say “hey do ad support!”, but in reality, doing paid download is probably much more realistic for the majority of the anime work that is being released right now.
[...] CCY: Try a new ad-supported model. [...]