From the news headlines at MyAnimeList:
Fukuda Tadashi, the president of Kadokawa Digix (the publisher of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky☆Star, etc.) said, “It is quite sad to see that anime videos are deleted due to copyright infringement. We can use YouTube and other video sharing services to advertise our titles outside Japan.”
He continued: “Anime fans who want to see anime in higher resolution will buy DVDs. People watch anime on YouTube because they have missed the TV broadcasting or want to check it just on trial. Currently we give up the chance of selling not only the DVDs but the illustrations or other character products. Those fans take their time to upload and advertise our anime titles. If we keep on claiming copyright infringements and neglecting their activities, we eventually lose anime fans.”
More at the MyAnimeList discussion topic. This quote comes from the translations provided at these two blog entries on MAL, based on the original source article.
Anyway this is a great non-greedy viewpoint. Or perhaps it’s a more realistic one based on the culture and technology of people today. Fans will buy what they like, regardless of whether it’s available free somewhere. YouTube serves as an advertising sampler for anime series that people would otherwise never buy because they don’t know what it’s about.
Torrents may be a different story, since high-quality TV rips (better than DVD quality) are available there. But we’re going beyond the scope of this discussion with that. The topic is YouTube and how it’s probably helping more than hurting the anime industry.
I wonder further if Japanese anime fans are different from American ones, because I know some friends who are content enough with YouTube despite the quality, but Japanese fans may still go out and buy the (expensive) DVDs? At least for Americans, it all depends on how much money we have available. If we just had all sorts of disposable income, DVD sales would be a lot higher I think. I’ve particularly been taking advantage of all the ADV and RightStuf sales that pop up, buying new release DVDs only for things like Kanon and Lucky Star when they come out over here.
Also semi-relevant is the awful USD/JPY exchange rate right now. YouTube may be used as a research tool to see what fans want so licensors can make more educated purchases (now that anime licenses are getting more expensive to acquire).
Piracy/Torrenting/Sharing isn’t going to stop, and the Internet grows larger as computers grow faster and more efficient with each year. This company president’s adapting a new theory of the business based on these changes (using it to his advantage) is a bold and risky move, but it could be the right one that turns the most profit in the future.
~Crisu
CJ
Crisu
Rakuen
Dave
ladytemeraire
Wow, that’s a great outlook. Something he said struck a chord with me – trial watch. Maybe he also knows that foreigners can’t just turn to the TV and hope to catch the show? I wish more companies thought this way. :(
I think it depends whether you want to support the industry! Over here, even though we’re hardly having enough money to eat our fill, we still spare some cash out just to purchase japanese merchandises imported over! =)
I think at the end of the day, people will still download no matter how low the dvds/stuff are. Because it’s free. This is something we can’t rid ourselves of =_=
If I really liked the series, I would buy it just to keep it even if I don’t plan on watching it again. And I believe that those who are satisfied with just YouTube wouldn’t really spend much (or spend nothing at all) on the legit stuffs anyway.
Even those who downloads from torrent would spend for an anime they really like which they otherwise wouldn’t have watched if it weren’t for them being able to download the series in the first place.
This is EXACTLY what we need from industry execs: people who are willing to actually acknowledge the benefits of “copyright infringement” and the Internet, AND actually use that to their advantage and create new, effective business models that are more suitable for the culture of today instead of sticking to the outdated schemes that many anime companies are holding onto.
Fukuda Tadashi is the man.
I definitely agree that piracy wouldn’t stop. So instead of winning about their losses, companies in the industry should find new ways to change their business model and make more money out of it.
And Tadashi brought up a nice points that its the entire industry which will be affected and not just DVDs
This is an exact truth. Many anime fans simply cannot obtain the DVD’s of their favorite animes so they turn to the only other place they can obtain it, the internet. And while the creators may believe that they are losing money, in the long run they will find that they are wrong. After discovering and finding that I like many animes on youtube, I have gone out and bought merchandise that relates to it if I can and attepmt to buy the DVD’s, though like I said they are highly expensive. So I agree with exactly what he’s saying. We all start to buy things in the long run, though maybe not at first. And if it weren’t for youtube, I would hardly even like half of the animes I do now, much less know about them.