In practice, I'm pretty sure Crunchyroll has only been useful for premium subscribers for almost 4 years now. Way back in 2022, they moved all of their simulcast series to premium only:...
In practice, I'm pretty sure Crunchyroll has only been useful for premium subscribers for almost 4 years now.
They introduced a "free sampler" section where you could watch a couple ad-supported episodes, but it was extremely limited.
I haven't been able to find any official crunchyroll announcements about this, but there are a bunch of threads from 2022-2023 where of people complaining that formerly free shows were moved to be premium only:
And the article highlights that this effort seems to have accelerated at the end of last year.
Anecdotally, the last time I watched anime on Crunchyroll seems to have been right in the middle of this in Summer 2022. Every time I've checked the site since, the volume of ad-supported content I wanted to watch was becoming vanishingly small
I'm kinda sad about this. I'm nostalgic for when Crunchyroll was my primary way to consume the medium about 15 years ago. Sure the website was ass and the app was worse, but it was a free and legal way to access a pretty big catalog of content. And you could even watch a lot of the newest stuff on a one week delay. Which was huge for me as a kid with no disposable income, and parents would not have even entertained the thought.
I wonder if Crunchyroll primarily viewed their ad-tier as a vehicle to introduce people to the medium, which isn't as useful anymore. Anime is more mainstream and more accessible than ever. If you wanted to try a new series, you're probably already subscribed to a service that has a decent section of anime titles. If you get hooked on the medium, Crunchyroll is basically the only service for North American viewers who want a bigger catalog. And they're probably fine alienating folks on the free-tier who would never consider paying, especially given the increasing quality of streaming on pirate sites.
On the one hand crunchy has been absolutely horrible with their AI subs and dubs. That said I do think this is how more businesses have needed to go forever. The endless “it’s free but here’s...
On the one hand crunchy has been absolutely horrible with their AI subs and dubs.
That said I do think this is how more businesses have needed to go forever. The endless “it’s free but here’s zillions of ads and we’re harvesting all your data” stuff needs to die. It’s not really sustainable and it’s awful for everyone.
The problem is I fully expect this to morph into “pay for it AND we do all the ads anyways” by next year
I think that they're trying to set the precedent that Crunchyroll is to be paid for post Sony buyout. "Everything is free except for the latest episode" wasn't making the numbers go brr fast...
I think that they're trying to set the precedent that Crunchyroll is to be paid for post Sony buyout. "Everything is free except for the latest episode" wasn't making the numbers go brr fast enough, and keeping some archival content out in front of the paywall wasn't worth what it was bringing in. But I don't think they would be as adverse to working with an advertiser if they decided to introduce ads on the lower tier or something.
"Everything is free except for the latest episode" wasn't making the numbers go brr fast enough
From what I understand, they got rid of that before the Sony buyout and only a limited selection of old shows have been available for free with ads for quite a while now. Even then, I don't believe it was the full show in a lot of cases. I saw some talk about how only the first 25~ episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was available, but the remaining were paid subscription only.
They changed it in 2022 after the acquisition, around the time they began merging the platforms and moving Funimation content to Crunchyroll. Some things had always required a subscription but up...
They changed it in 2022 after the acquisition, around the time they began merging the platforms and moving Funimation content to Crunchyroll. Some things had always required a subscription but up to that point most new series had episodes available for free a week after release.
From what I've heard over the years (I had a subscription for most of the past decade), they frequently repeated the same ads and those were often for their own products, i.e. not many other...
From what I've heard over the years (I had a subscription for most of the past decade), they frequently repeated the same ads and those were often for their own products, i.e. not many other companies were buying them. Seems like they never developed a good pipeline for it, so I'm not surprised that they finally decided to ditch the option entirely.
In practice, I'm pretty sure Crunchyroll has only been useful for premium subscribers for almost 4 years now.
Way back in 2022, they moved all of their simulcast series to premium only: https://web.archive.org/web/20220327075951/https://help.crunchyroll.com/hc/en-us/articles/4962816171412-Changes-to-Ad-Supported-Viewing-
They introduced a "free sampler" section where you could watch a couple ad-supported episodes, but it was extremely limited.
I haven't been able to find any official crunchyroll announcements about this, but there are a bunch of threads from 2022-2023 where of people complaining that formerly free shows were moved to be premium only:
And the article highlights that this effort seems to have accelerated at the end of last year.
Anecdotally, the last time I watched anime on Crunchyroll seems to have been right in the middle of this in Summer 2022. Every time I've checked the site since, the volume of ad-supported content I wanted to watch was becoming vanishingly small
I'm kinda sad about this. I'm nostalgic for when Crunchyroll was my primary way to consume the medium about 15 years ago. Sure the website was ass and the app was worse, but it was a free and legal way to access a pretty big catalog of content. And you could even watch a lot of the newest stuff on a one week delay. Which was huge for me as a kid with no disposable income, and parents would not have even entertained the thought.
I wonder if Crunchyroll primarily viewed their ad-tier as a vehicle to introduce people to the medium, which isn't as useful anymore. Anime is more mainstream and more accessible than ever. If you wanted to try a new series, you're probably already subscribed to a service that has a decent section of anime titles. If you get hooked on the medium, Crunchyroll is basically the only service for North American viewers who want a bigger catalog. And they're probably fine alienating folks on the free-tier who would never consider paying, especially given the increasing quality of streaming on pirate sites.
On the one hand crunchy has been absolutely horrible with their AI subs and dubs.
That said I do think this is how more businesses have needed to go forever. The endless “it’s free but here’s zillions of ads and we’re harvesting all your data” stuff needs to die. It’s not really sustainable and it’s awful for everyone.
The problem is I fully expect this to morph into “pay for it AND we do all the ads anyways” by next year
End of an era for sure.
Advertising companies must really be a pain to work with for them to just cut it.
I think that they're trying to set the precedent that Crunchyroll is to be paid for post Sony buyout. "Everything is free except for the latest episode" wasn't making the numbers go brr fast enough, and keeping some archival content out in front of the paywall wasn't worth what it was bringing in. But I don't think they would be as adverse to working with an advertiser if they decided to introduce ads on the lower tier or something.
From what I understand, they got rid of that before the Sony buyout and only a limited selection of old shows have been available for free with ads for quite a while now. Even then, I don't believe it was the full show in a lot of cases. I saw some talk about how only the first 25~ episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was available, but the remaining were paid subscription only.Edit: Never mind. My sense of time is off.
They changed it in 2022 after the acquisition, around the time they began merging the platforms and moving Funimation content to Crunchyroll. Some things had always required a subscription but up to that point most new series had episodes available for free a week after release.
From what I've heard over the years (I had a subscription for most of the past decade), they frequently repeated the same ads and those were often for their own products, i.e. not many other companies were buying them. Seems like they never developed a good pipeline for it, so I'm not surprised that they finally decided to ditch the option entirely.