Downloading Affecting Anime Sales
Illegal downloading forcing distributors to rethink marketing
Barely ten years after exploding into the American cultural landscape, Japanese animation now faces distribution challenges stemming from illegal downloading.
The challenge also highlights the change anime's status with American audiences, many of whom had little about the stylish animation beyond “Speed Racer” reruns 20 years ago.
“With its growth in popularity, anime is no longer known as something ‘from Japan,’” said Brian Ige, Director of Sales for VIZ Media during an interview with the writer. “It’s penetrated our market and is now a key component of American pop culture.”
While anime shows have been broadcast on North American televisions stations as far back as the 1960s, the genre initially proved a difficult sell to American distributors due to the limited number of titles available. As a result, American audiences only caught glimpses of anime’s potential through shows aimed at male audiences and remained ignorant of the amount of material available.
“Most early anime releases were aimed at the comic fan base of males 18-34,” Trulee Karahashi, CEO of the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation, said to the writer. “A growth in female fans helped broaden the market."
Over time, new shows became available and the market slowly started to expand. Then in 1997, American audiences were introduced to a show called Pokemon and the anime industry had an epiphany.
“The Pokemon phenomenon showed there was a mass audience for this venue,” Milton Griepp of ICV2.com said to the writer.
After that, anime experienced a renaissance with American audiences. Distributors started releasing a greater diversity of shows and going through larger companies like Borders and Barnes & Noble to release the products. As more titles get released American audiences have responded with greater demand; the number of anime shows on American television went up from 18 shows on five channels in 2002 to 38 shows on 11 channels in 2007.
But while the popularity has grown on television, so has the amount of illegal downloading. Griepp said the amount of anime DVD sales went down from $500 million in 2003 to $300 million in 2005.
“This has been a big problem for producers,” Griepp said. “You can’t expect to compete with free.”
Part of the problem rests with the significant lag time between releases. It can take four years before a new anime show starts appearing on a mainstream television station like the Cartoon Network. It has led many fans to cut out the middleman and illegally download the Japanese versions rather than wait for them to be released.
Distribution companies have begun using new strategies to combat these problems. In addition to cutting down the amount of time between a show’s release in Japan and its relocation to the U.S., some have tried using the internet to their favor. VIZ Media started posting some of their licensed shows through streaming websites like Toonami Jetstream. Ige said so far the response has been positive.
“TV broadcast is not the only game in town anymore,” Ige said. We’ve seen very strong ratings and traffic through network broadcast and digital media sites, which is always a positive sign.”
But with new titles being released and audiences growing just as quickly, it becomes clear that the demand for anime shows will not be dissipating anytime soon.
“From what we see, the audience is still expanding,” Griepp said. “The DVD sales don’t reflect this, but the [number of] shows on TV do.”
