There’s a lot of things that are great about the Crunchyroll service…and then there are things they could do that can make it better. Like maybe do family plans. Wait, huh? As Justin scrolled through his twitter feed, he caught this tweet from the creator of anime site Yatta-Tachi:
I wish @Crunchyroll offered Family Plans… >_<
— ♥️ Katy's Going To A-Kon • #InclusiveGeekCreators (@HarleyGin) March 11, 2016
So, Justin thought it would be cool to ask her why do a family plan. And, well, he got some answers (NOTE: heads up that this was last month when I got these answers):
Justin: So, why should Crunchyroll consider doing family plans?
Katy: I have a lot of family members and friends that watch anime but unfortunately I’ve been trying to fight them to come to the light side and legally watch anime, and I’ve noticed a lot of the gripes I’ve been hearing is the fact that money is an issue. We came out with an article not too long ago about why we should stop illegally streaming anime in 2016. I believe if there was a family option, it would help, because it could be a matter of a group of friends getting together, getting an account with a family plan, and it would be cheaper that way. I would love to upgrade my plan to a family plan and be able to have my siblings watch anime legally and not feel like they don’t have to go on these *sigh* virus ridden sites just to watch anime.
Do most streaming sites have family plans?
As far as I know Spotify, that’s where the idea came from, I have a shared family plan with my family members. It’s a couple bucks cheaper for them all around, but at the same time it’s knowing that they are not illegally doing things you aren’t supposed to do. I feel like it would be a great business strategy if Crunchyroll offered that. It’s something right now that’s not really offered as much. Amazon Prime Video has a family plan, my mom has an Amazon Prime account and I’m on there as a family member and I’m able to watch Amazon videos.
I think it could be something to where the option would be available to see how it looks, because yes, they might be losing a little bit of money, I mean it could be a couple bucks cheaper, could be a dollar cheaper, but still in the long run that would gain more users onto the site, and a higher conversion rate. Having an extra option does increase conversation rate, and it could be where they could gear it towards anime clubs. For high schools, colleges, could be like a group discount so to speak. It would be like, “Ok, you have 20 members, we could give them a discount, and it’s like a dollar off per month if they subscribe on Crunchyroll and pay for it that way.” I know they offer group memberships at conventions to get more people to come in and they get fairly good profit from that. Having that option would really — I mean Crunchyroll’s already in the forefront as far as when you think about legal anime streaming, but this would push the boundaries further for them. I honestly can’t think of any other legal anime streaming site that has that option. Even FUNimation could do something like that. Any legal streaming site that would have an anime family plan would be groundbreaking, honestly.
The reason I never thought about a family plan is because most of the streaming sites don’t have that, like FUNimation, Daisuki…I don’t know if they considered it.
Unless they have, and they’re just trying to figure out a method to go about it correctly. I know Crunchyroll is evolving every day, you’re always hearing something, like now that they have stuff going on overseas and have employees over there, they’re going to potentially start doing their own anime production stuff — it could be tomorrow that they announce that they’ll be doing something like that.
But it would honestly be a fantastic idea and I think a lot of fans would appreciate that. I know I would appreciate that because then I could be like, “Hey guys! Hey all my family members! I can get a family plan, and it’s a little more per person for me to pay for, but I rather pay for it knowing that I can be able to help the industry. Also if something goes wrong, it would be one account versus several different accounts. So honestly I think of it more like a phone plan, you have your family phone plans to where you have your singular phone plan or you go to a family phone plan you’re still saving money but in the long run you’re keeping that customer VS not getting any income from that person at all.
Ok, since you’re insistent on having an anime family plan, make your pitch that Crunchyroll should consider having that.
*laughs* I think if Crunchyroll took the initiative step towards a family plan it would be groundbreaking and would allow fans to have that extra option to go legal vs illegal. Where we have a lot of problems is people getting upset that it costs too much here and there. But if a group of people band together and say, “we all want to get a Crunchyroll account, but we want a group discount or family plan where we can save a little bit of money,” I feel that we should have that option, or it should be available at some point.