So, the day many of us suspected has arrived: Crunchyroll Premium members will soon need to pay more. Time to analyze how this will affect your pocketbook and the future of the Great Streaming Wars.
The Price Hike
As of this writing, nothing has been posted on Crunchyroll’s site or forums. But around March 22nd, an email went out to all subscribers announcing the service’s first ever price hike, and the news made its way around the web.
Starting May 1st, new users will have to pay $7.99 a month for Premium membership, up from $6.95. Annual subscriptions will go up from $59.95 to $79.99. Current members will get a temporary reprieve: those who pay monthly won’t see their bill rise until August 1st, and those who pay yearly will be grandfathered in until May 1st, 2020. British and Australian subscribers will also see their rates go up.
There are two aspects of this price change to look at: the reasoning behind the hikes, and the amount of the hikes. Let’s start with the latter.
Analyzing the Price Increases
The monthly plan going up by $1 (well, technically, $1.04) was not unexpected. Video subscriptions aren’t like grocery or fast food prices where you might expect to see a $.25 increase. Sure, it was possible that Crunchyroll could have gone up to about $7.50, but I don’t think any streaming service charges on the half-dollar; it’s always something like $x.99 a month.
As of this writing, it is unknown if the three-month plan will still be offered or what the price will be.
Now, annual plans, on the other hand…at $20 more a year, that’s more than I predicted. Right now, Premium members on a yearly plan save $23.45 by paying in advance. Starting in 2020, that savings goes down to $15.89. To compare:
$6.95 to $7.99 a month = 15% increase
$59.95 to $79.99 a year = 33.4% increase
So that means annual plan members will feel double the sting of the hike relative to the current rates. But that’s nothing compared to British viewers who will be facing up to a whopping 62.5% increase for their annual plans!
Now, saving $16 is still nice, especially for Crunchyroll’s target audiences of teenagers and young adults. But that means that new annual members won’t even be getting two full months free compared to how current yearly plans give you over three months free versus the monthly plans.
Crunchyroll will no doubt argue it’s still only $.22 a day ($.17 currently) to support anime. However, if there’s a dull season of new shows or if life just gets get in the way, if someone puts their Premium membership on hold for just two months of the year, they’d be paying less than going on the annual plan. Plus, it’s not like they’ll be going without anime for those months; unlike some other streaming services, Crunchyroll anime can still be viewed without paying. Of course, in exchange, fans will have to watch ads and give up manga. Still, for those periods where a user isn’t watching a lot of anime, the significant rise in the annual plan makes going month-to-month more appealing than before.
Why the Rate Hike?
Still, why is the price going up? As media companies almost always respond in these cases, Crunchyroll says it’s “due to rising costs of content and infrastructure” and will bring even more series to the service.
AT&T has been raising prices on most of its video services lately. Most DirecTV plans went up $3 to $5 a month (plus up to $1.90 additionally) at the beginning of the year. Earlier in March, DirecTV Now announced that their new entry-level packages will contain HBO but fewer channels than their previous cheapest packages, which current subscribers can keep but pay an additional $10 a month. Other changes AT&T has made recently include dropping DramaFever, making it more expensive to cancel DirecTV, and increasing the price on some U-Verse TV packages.
While AT&T and TimeWarner argued that merging would lead to lower prices, several analysts have pointed out the merger has led to higher prices. In fact, DirecTV Now had a price increase just weeks after the deal was final, and so did its wireless plans. In the case of the latter, AT&T promoted this as increasing the amount of data for each package.
Regardless, it’s hard not to see all this as consumers paying for AT&T’s purchase while receiving little in return. This is also makes people skeptical of other major deals like the recent Disney purchase of 21st Century Fox and the T-Mobile/Sprint proposed merger.
However, most of the streaming services have been raising rates, so Crunchyroll is hardly alone here. Hulu’s basic service is the only exception. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Funimation’s changes was the final trigger. While Funimation’s basic plan will now undercut Crunchyroll by $2 a month, Crunchyroll claims to have 90% of the anime available worldwide, so they’ll probably focus on that going forward. Despite that, the post-Funimation breakup has meant that quite a few series were removed from Crunchyroll, including the first seasons of hits Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia.
In Crunchyroll’s defense, they haven’t had a price increase since its launch in 2006. That’s a long time. In fact, according to this site, the rate of inflation is that costs are now 25.38% higher now than in 2006.
So that new $7.99 a month is relatively less than the cost of a membership back when Crunchyroll started. Of course, that also means that the annual plan is higher than the rate of inflation: $59.95 in 2006 is equivalent to $75.17 in 2019. Again, this means that the annual plan is quite a jump.
So while it seems like consumers are paying AT&T’s bill for TimeWarner, in the real world, everything is going up. Worker wages, the cost of bidding on anime with rivals like Netflix and Funimation, advertising, new technology…it all adds up. Fans may argue that projects like High Guardian Spice also are increasing costs and should be dropped, but even without Ellation Studios, Crunchyroll memberships had to go up sometime. It couldn’t stay under $7 forever.
AT&T’s Future Plans
As of this writing, AT&T has not announced if VRV’s subscription price is going to go up. If it remains at or near $9.99 a month, it makes it really hard to argue that a Crunchyroll Premium membership is the way to go. Even with the annual plan, $40 a year ($3.33 a month) for additional anime from HIDIVE, classic cartoons from Boomerang and Nickelodeon, and more? Surely you or someone in your household can get less than $4 a month in entertainment value from that.
Looking further ahead, WarnerMedia (AT&T) is planning on launching a new streaming service late this year. Early reports indicate it might be like Hulu in that it has ads and no-ads options. It is also going to have three tiers, and the most expensive level is going to include kids & family and niche/genre programming.
That sounds a lot like VRV. Plus we know that Cartoon Network (Adult Swim) is going to air more anime, so that’s also a way that the kids/family and anime (a genre) sections are teaming up. Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised if Crunchyroll, VRV, and/or Adult Swim’s anime lineup is included in this new service. I’m sure AT&T is hoping that Crunchyroll’s price increase will get some people to say, “Well, for $x more a month, we get all this, so let’s go with the most expensive package.”
Hopefully though, with this extra cash, AT&T/Crunchyroll does put some work into the platform. I’ve been having problems recently with the manga reader on iOS where it just hangs upon starting up, and other fans have been complaining about the video player, the forums, and additional issues.
Chances are, however, is that AT&T will probably just use the funds to pay down its $171 billion debt, much of it caused by taking on TimeWarner.
Final Thoughts
Again, considering pretty much all the streaming platforms are raising rates, it’s hardly a shock that Crunchyroll is following suit, no matter if you think AT&T conned the government and consumers in regards to the merger or not. It might have also been nice for Crunchyroll to make an announcement and explain their reason instead of waiting and responding to inquiries from news organizations, but I guess they didn’t want their forums to be full of people complaining about the increase.
But if you have been thinking about getting a Crunchyroll Premium subscription or on a monthly plan, get an annual plan in the next month. You can be set until 2021 before having to face the price increase. The new streaming service, if it includes Crunchyroll, won’t launch until Quarter 4 of this year, so you’ll have gotten several months of Premium service but aren’t locked in for too much longer if the new service turns out to be a better value for you. Otherwise, the few dollars saved in the grandfathered monthly plan isn’t worth it if you weren’t already a member. Either wait until there’s something you really want or continue with the ads. It’s disappointing Crunchyroll isn’t raising the annual plan by $10 instead of $20, but I guess that happens after not having a price hike in so long.
Otherwise, the <$7 price was nice while it lasted. But with the Great Streaming Wars continuing, we’ll have to check back in a few months to see whether Crunchyroll’s library is enough or if the other streaming sites’ mixed content is a better value.