CrunchyRoll Archive

Asian entertainment destination site Crunchyroll has announced a variety of new partnerships with three major Japanese anime studios today. The three studios are: TV TOKYO Corporation, SHUEISHA Inc. and Pierrot Co., Ltd. Back in March, Crunchyroll signed a variety of content distribution deals including with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

Crunchyroll self-reports 4.6 million unique users a month. Crunchyroll also announced an upcoming relaunch of the site to verify that professionally-produced content is approved by licensors.

Earlier this year there was a good deal of talk around Crunchyroll and their copyright issues. It seems that Crunchyroll is following in the same footsteps as YouTube. Tony Hung took a look at CrunchyRoll and went deep into the copyright and believes that CrunchyRoll is a "legal landmine."

After all of the hoopla about Crunchyroll’s financing and their copyright issues back in March, the company seems to have rebounded and are making great strides with partnerships. The Crunchyroll story seems very similar to the YouTube story in the early days.

Last month Crunchyroll announced partnerships with a variety of content providers in the U.S. and Japan. Today Crunchyroll is announcing a new partnership with the THINK company based in Japan. The partnership will create a new channel on Crunchyroll for the "Anime Innovation Tokyo ", backed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. The launch will include several videos and digital channel dedicated to Anime Innovation Tokyo’s content.

Crunchyroll self reports over four million unique visitors a month with a worldwide audience. Crunchyroll announced a $4 million Series A round of venture capital in February 2008.

You might remember Crunchyroll from their funding announcement last month and the discussion about copyright issues earlier this month. Tony Hung had a good overview of the copyright issue with regards to Crunchyroll.

Today Crunchyroll is back in the news, this time they have launched a content partnership program. The first batch of partners include: Akibanana, DLE, GDH, and GTChannel. These companies are based in the U.S. and in Japan.

While Crunchyroll has removed ads on the site, there is word that advertising might begin to appear in the videos themselves and that revenue will be shared between Crunchyroll and the content provider. Crunchyroll currently self-reports over four million unique visitors a month.

We were the first to write about the CrunchyRoll $4.05 million venture capital round last month. The good doctor Tony Hung took a look at CrunchyRoll and went deep into the copyright and believes that CrunchyRoll is a "legal landmine." 

Hung is back tonight with some excellent research into the fansubbing community on CrunchyRoll. CrunchyRoll members don’t just upload videos, they also subtitle them and this is called "fansubbing". Apparently the community isn’t happy with the success that CrunchyRoll has received and the round of funding and have begun to show their feelings on the deal. Hung explains that the Fansubbers could also be the target of legal action. Check out Hung’s research on the topic.

Update: Mike and Tony have good overviews of the copyright issues facing crunchyroll.

Called the Asian YouTube by some, video sharing site CrunchyRoll has picked up $4.05 million Series A venture capital today, reports PE Hub. Venrock led the round, with partner David Siminoff joining the board of directors. The site is mainly focused around anime but has content in a variety of areas including music and cars.

Videos are available in h.264 hi-def where available but there’s no embed option. Perhaps this is due to the costs of hosting which CrunchyRoll founder Shinji mentions are continuing to increase — perhaps the funding will help in this area. Videos can be crunched which is Digg-like, higher crunched videos move to the front page.

CrunchyRoll recently removed all ads on the site and the blog post is worth reading. They are currently generating revenue from donations with badges for users who provide a donation. We wrote about how well badges work for Flickr, so why not for CrunchyRoll as well? Of course, donation-based revenue generation requires an active, passionate and very loyal community.