Sometime last week it was announced that CrunchyRoll, the popular Asian media streaming website, acquired over four million dollars of funding, most of it from Venrock, whose partner David Siminoff will join CrunchyRoll’s Board of Directors. According to an interview with blog Kokoro Media, CrunchyRoll has been negotiating licensing deals with a “select number of Japanese firms” in order to legally license the anime content that is often posted illegally to their site.
So what does all this business jargon mean for you, the average anime fan? Well, it means that the anime episodes you’re watching on CrunchyRoll will now most likely have ads either at the beginning or in the middle of them, but the huge upside to this is that you will be watching your anime legally. If CrunchyRoll can market themselves well among major Japanese anime companies, they could easily help springboard the anime industry into the world of legal digital distribution. And that, my friends, means more anime for you, licensed quicker, and sold cheaper (if not totally free). Future of the industry, here we come!
[via Kokoro Media]
