Streaming service Crunchyroll raises prices weeks after killing its free tier

Sony has made streaming anime pricier since buying Crunchyroll.

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[cool_ish]

Surprise! Enshittification at work. I miss Funimation :-( I also really miss comments on Crunchyroll.

Still irked by this. The comments were half of the entertainment.

 

[rodrigodk]

Interesting.... I received an email saying that I will get a price reduction.

From BRL 199 to BRL 179 annually (my local currency)

Maybe it's related to the USD getting weaker, but Sony wanting to keep their margins as well?

 

[Dark Jaguar]

That's mostly based on my interactions with other anime fans. Lots of them put shows on "in the background" and aren't paying close attention to the screen, so they want the dialog in a language they understand rather than reading subtitles. And at this point, there are some pretty good VAs that manage to deliver good performances, so it's not like the 80s/90s where 99% of dubs were either hilariously bad or "Microsoft Sam on quaaludes".

The latter is just a function of the attention market. Most anime tends to fall into "flavor of the month" and rarely holds attention beyond the primary airing date, so being first to market with something non-JP understanders can digest matters more than ensuring the translations are both highly-accurate and localized.

Huh... while I do listen to some things in the background, it's usually something informational that doesn't need a video context. Listening to a cartoon, namely those known for telling stories visually with a lot of bombastic action, as if it's a radio program seems to defeat the point to me. Like, if I were to watch one of those charming Studio Ghibli movies, they have my full attention start to end. I admit in those cases, I tend to watch with dubs, because Disney has done an amazing job dubbing those with star studded talent.

 

[Alexstarfire]

Funny thing about this. Prior to this particular price increase. They took away the option to annually subscribe for about 1-2 years. Back in about 2020 - 2022 they took away the annual plan which was $60 at the time. And in 2024 they jacked it up to $80 for legacy. And brought back the Annual plan at $99 so legacy customers still got a discount.

I've been paying $80 a year since at least 2020. That's as far back as I can see my card statements online. I've been wondering if this price change was going to affect the annual plan price wise but as far as I can tell, it doesn't.

 

[Andrewcw]

I've been paying $80 a year since at least 2020. That's as far back as I can see my card statements online. I've been wondering if this price change was going to affect the annual plan price wise but as far as I can tell, it doesn't.

In the last email they provided. They are raising the rate to $99 October 31st.

 

[williamyf]

I've been getting into anime lately, appreciating it more and more (started delving into animation after seeing Arcane S1).

One thing that's been mostly horrible is the theme songs (with a few exceptions like Cowboy Bebop, GitS SAC, ...). Usually I can't move fast enough to skip over them.

Repetition is another thing, as a commenter noted above. Though with Yoko Kanno's works for example I don't mind that.

+ 1 for Yoko Kanno. Try also the music of the BGC universe, Both OG BGC, AD-Police and BGC 2040, heavy industrial rock mostly.

But, if you are gonna skip intros or outros, please be warned that some Animes have different animations for the openings or endings.

Planettes is a good example, also, the first season of One Punch Man

So, do your research.

 

[BCGeiger]

It’s been my observation that their ‘Free Tier’ was a sham anyway. Yes they had it, but every single anime I tried to watch was “Premium Only”. EVERY…SINGLE…ONE. So they may have had a Free Tier but it didn’t let you do anything but create an account.

 

[bbf]

Crunchyroll got it's start as a place for people to upload and share their fansubs. They have apparently forgotten that piracy used to be the norm for anime fans. This is just going to drive people away, because very few truly feel locked in.

In the good ole days, Japanese animation would most likely NEVER get commercially distributed in foreign markets, so it was much more of a grey area to distribute fansubs outside of Japan.

But now it's legally much more black and white since distribution agreements with professional subbing and dubbing exist for the US market.

The "old ways" literally cannot legally exist anymore.

 

[BCGeiger]

In the good ole days, Japanese animation would most likely NEVER get commercially distributed in foreign markets, so it was much more of a grey area to distribute fansubs outside of Japan.

But now it's legally much more black and white since distribution agreements with professional subbing and dubbing exist for the US market.

The "old ways" cannot legally exist anymore.

But if they price themselves out of the market, the Old Ways will come back.

 

[Vrmithrax]

Wow, it's almost like exactly what we feared would happen when Sony bought it, has actually been happening! Anyone who expected anything less than the lower and free tiers to go away, and costs to just keep climbing, has obviously not been paying attention to the streaming service trends of the last decade... Or of the tendencies and revenue appetites of the big companies that have been assimilating smaller content providing services.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Wow, it's almost like exactly what we feared would happen when Sony bought it, has actually been happening! Anyone who expected anything less than the lower and free tiers to go away, and costs to just keep climbing, has obviously not been paying attention to the streaming service trends of the last decade... Or of the tendencies and revenue appetites of the big companies that have been assimilating smaller content providing services.

At the end of the day, the populace will opt for alternatives. I give credit to iTunes and it's ilk for finally hitting a price point people were willing to pay to avoid having to search for free songs elsewhere, but TV, movies, and games seem to be running from that. They'll find out what happens.

 

[briareus]

Meh, it already wasn't worth it due to their spotty catalog and generally shit interface, now it's even more not worth it. Heading in the wrong direction, Sony.

 

[bobbed]

I was already irked at the Fan tier losing the ability to download episodes to watch offline and the selection has been dwindling and dwindling, so the experience is being enshitified with an unusual level of multipronged gusto.

It’s been years, but I think CR is getting prime placement in my resist and unsubscribe list.

 

[nzod]

+ 1 for Yoko Kanno. Try also the music of the BGC universe, Both OG BGC, AD-Police and BGC 2040, heavy industrial rock mostly.

But, if you are gonna skip intros or outros, please be warned that some Animes have different animations for the openings or endings.

Planettes is a good example, also, the first season of One Punch Man

So, do your research.

Thanks for the recommendations! (I loved Planetes.)

I do watch the sequences at least once regardless if I like the song. I'm not enabling any auto-skip, so I'll probably notice if the intro / outro changes, then the watch-at-least-once rule kicks in.

So I defend wanting to skip the sequences, but not the full automation of it - it does feel excessive. A mode where they're only auto-skipped from the second episode up to the last of a given season, would be a useful addition to this feature.

 

[williamyf]

Thanks for the recommendations! (I loved Planetes.)

I do watch the sequences at least once regardless if I like the song. I'm not enabling any auto-skip, so I'll probably notice if the intro / outro changes, then the watch-at-least-once rule kicks in.

So I defend wanting to skip the sequences, but not the full automation of it - it does feel excessive. A mode where they're only auto-skipped from the second episode up to the last of a given season, would be a useful addition to this feature.

Also, I forgot to recomend the music of Paranoia Agent. Satoshi Kon recruited Sumussu Hirasawa for the music.

 

[williamyf]

Interesting.... I received an email saying that I will get a price reduction.

From BRL 199 to BRL 179 annually (my local currency)

Maybe it's related to the USD getting weaker, but Sony wanting to keep their margins as well?

Remember that regional prices may vary due to purchasing price parity, in order to discourage people in poorer regions (Like us in LatAm) to sail the 7 seas. We in LatAm get these sorts of things cheaper.

At least you can pay in Reais. We in Venezuela have to pay in U$D. Less U$D than the people in the USoA, but Still U$D

And the worst part is, aside from select markets like Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, Corporations do not see a good ROI by buyinmg publicity in these platforms, so free-with-ads is not an option either.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

I was already irked at the Fan tier losing the ability to download episodes to watch offline and the selection has been dwindling and dwindling, so the experience is being enshitified with an unusual level of multipronged gusto.

It’s been years, but I think CR is getting prime placement in my resist and unsubscribe list.

You will own nothing, and your children won't know what was taken from them. All they need to do is do it long enough for anyone that remembered anything before to die out. I see that with the younger gamer crowd, who have no memory of manipulative business practices in those games, and assume that's normal and nothing else would "work", and have an attitude that a game without constant trickles of costumes or whatever is a "dead game". Even single player games get that pronouncement, where I grew up in a time where I couldn't care less about how many people were playing the game I was playing at the same time I was playing it.

 

[Asbestos Muffins]

the problem is crunchyroll and netflix have a lot of random anime but not a lot of older shows their predecessors may have had that are now lost in licensing hell

I bought a crunchyroll sub this year as a gift and its been worth it but for years the 'free' tier was anything but and was extremely frustrating to use especially when they ran 20 of the same ad over and over again.

 

[lyme]

not sure about their own app, but you could already do that if watching through prime.

Except that Prime generally sucks for Anime, unless you like French subtitles.

 

[poltroon]

Crunchyroll is the service we use the most. I appreciate being commercial free and I appreciate having a wide selection of anime. I don't love price increases but I also think $10/month is fair for how much we use it and for the fact that we get access to at least a few series of very high quality content. (Sure, I'd like less dreck but that's not directly their doing.)

As an app I like Netflix even less and their Anime offerings are inferior. I found Prime completely unwatchable with its very terrible app and constant commercials last time I tried. I can't use it even if it does have content I might like.

I am irked that Crunchyroll thinks autoskip of credits is the most important thing they can add. 1, it's already there. 2, I only do it for the most marginal anime. I deeply despise Netflix's very aggressive autoskip where it's sometimes not even possible to watch the end credits. Like seriously, that is the easiest thing to fast forward or drop out of if you want.

I would love the Roku app not to suck and I would love it if their suggested categories/"personal recommendations" felt like a human who knew anything about anime had made them, or a machine that remembered which series we've already watched had made them.

 

[HiroTheProtagonist]

the problem is crunchyroll and netflix have a lot of random anime but not a lot of older shows their predecessors may have had that are now lost in licensing hell

I bought a crunchyroll sub this year as a gift and its been worth it but for years the 'free' tier was anything but and was extremely frustrating to use especially when they ran 20 of the same ad over and over again.

For that, there's RetroCrush.

Except that Prime generally sucks for Anime, unless you like French subtitles.

Prime's anime selections are weird as hell. On one hand, they managed to get the rights for Banana Fish (which terrible dub aside was a fantastic show) and Season 2 of Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt. On the other hand, they had to gall to charge per-episode for No Guns Life, which even putting aside the economics was a tremendous disappointment. That they offer any anime at all seems strange, given that nobody would specifically pay for Prime for it and their selection of licensing indicates that the people in charge are just picking at random.

 

[Wtcher]

I find Crunchyroll really creepy.

I was checking out their site a while ago because I thought maybe I should expand my horizons and watch some anime. I did not enter my information, I was just viewing their site.

Nearly immediately (I think the next day) I received spam from them.

SADLY, I think my pihole was down at the time and clearly my firewall/etc weren't enough to prevent them from somehow slurping down my gmail address. That specific address, I also haven't given out in YEARS.

So yeah, creepy and I refuse to do business with them. Other companies which had done similarly are:

• Alaska Airlines
• Tilley Hats (US and UK)