There are no anime publishers that can afford to pay $20,000 to $80,000 an episode for licensing. A 24 episode series at $50,000 per episode would cost the American distributor, before production, voice actors, shipping, etc. $1,200,000 just to get the door open. For many anime distributors, that is more money than they can make in over a year.

I would check your sources on that (and feel free to show your source). Anime distributors are not that insane.

Wait a minute. Didn't you just say this?:

I am the one that said all media suffers from internet DLs. So which one is it?

Yes, when an industry is small it is more affected by illegal DLs, because every stolen title is a larger % of the bottom line.

How do you "make something more popular"? If you could answer that, you'd be a billionaire.

Of course you can judge anime movies and series by trailers, just like you can with movies. A small % of people will buy it after stealing it, but they are certainly the minority.

The problem now, especially in the manga and anime "fan" community is that the culture of stealing is so ingrained, that many young people don't even realize what they are doing is wrong or illegal. What the manga (my focus) companies need to do is give the fans a better online or electronic experience than they can get from scanlations. An example of this is the ComiXology reader. And give it to them at a reasonable price.

Look at sales of music 20 years ago and look at it now, and tell me illegal downloading isn't a significant reason for the crumbling of the music industry.

Exactly, who adapts to present conditions survives, who stays with the old ways will eventually "fade away".
Not really, production costs where a lot higher, so was the logistics involved (cd printing, cover printing, transport expenses of a CD) and the final shop costs. Now to maintain an online music store, you have less than a quarter the expenses. And even though you sale a lot cheaper and your anual total income is less than 75% (just a estimation for exemplification purposes) of what you used to have, your total profit exceeds the ex ones.
BTW, every time you listen to an officially listed song on youtube, the artist gets a bit of money, also, every electronic device that can capture, record or listen/watch through, includes a so called copyright tax (which is applied in almost 60% of countries worldwide), in case you use it to copy something. So they are not really loosing exactly the high amount of money they are pretending.

You are making my case for me. Yes, it is much less expensive to make and produce music these days, and they are STILL losing money. They have eliminated much of the "physical" product, so what you are buying is data. The cost to produce a single physical CD is monumentally higher than an MP3, which is basically zero. But 20 years ago you would have several platinum singles (1,000,000 sales) a month. Now it is several a year.

Because singles are still counted in physical sales, the online sales, mp3 or any other format are not included.

I agree, illegal downloading is bad, it causes losses, but overestimating the losses, on that I can't agree. One million downloads doesn't mean 1.000.000 songs not being sold as they imply in losses reports all the time on media everywhere, this is what I was saying.

A wise man[well a few wise men] said this:The future is always trying to control the past. We cannot stop our children illegally distributing music,we can only drive it underground.

i didn't convey my idea correctly. my contradiction - "only music is affected" was meant like...when you compare money music industries lose on CDs, then anime, manga probably can't scratch even 1% of that money...of course its a rough guess. so idea was in pure sums of money, not for each media.


why attack me about popularity issue? it is their product, their jobs on the line. it is them who have to think how to develop their product and how to market it. and if they can't fix popularity issue then it is also up to them to fight illegal downloads.

Underestimating the losses is also just as bad. People are listening to their iPods more than ever, but somehow sales are down.

And you better believe online sales count. If they didn't these albums would have sales in the four-digit range. (Billboard started counting paid online sales over five years ago).

The music industry is much larger than the anime industry, so dollar for dollar it is much higher, but it also takes much less to take the smaller industries down.

I am not attacking you about the popularity issue, but I am saying that if you knew the secret of how to make something popular, then you'd be a billionaire. My point is that it isn't as simple as "making it popular".

And the industries are fighting illegal downloads, but you also understand these are small companies and legal battles are devastatingly expensive. Lately the companies have joined forces and even the Japanese license holders are putting in their fair share, so hopefully more progress will happen.

i agree with you and more power to these people and their business. my underlying point was simply that it is still all up to developers if they want to stay in business. people won't stop downloading spontaneously and they also won't start buying products by the shipload if there isn't a very good reason aka - great marketing or actions taken against masess.