Crunchyroll · B2C · anime streaming service
Hold the price for years while you grow subscribers every other way
Grew from 200K to 12M+ paid subscribers; first price rise after 6-7 years
Workedpricingpositioning-niche
What they did
Primary metric was paid subscribers, with an assumption that price could rise gradually later. Crunchyroll deliberately did not raise price for a long time, trying to exhaust every way of adding new subscribers first (marketing, partnerships, more shows, side products for people who were cancelling). The first price increase came only after six or seven years of scaling paid subscribers.
What happened
Grew from about 200,000 paid subscribers to over 12 million (current figure, per the guest); price increase came late.
- Stage
- 200K to multi-million paid subscribers
- Effort
- 6-7 years of strategy
“Fast-forward to today and I think they're over 12 million paid subscribers, and we didn't increase price for a long time. We really wanted to exhaust all the possible ways of bringing on new subscribers”
“I think when we were at Crunchyroll, even Hulu, too, the primary metric was paid subscribers, and baked into that was this assumption that over time, you could gradually increase price.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
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- Crunchyroll: Sell merch, events and games to your most loyal subscribersLet it compete on fan relationship instead of the best video player
- Crunchyroll: Add the shows cancelled users asked for, then email them to come back
- Crunchyroll: Compare people who cancel in the first month with those who stay
- Crunchyroll: Survey what regular subscribers and your biggest fans would each paySomewhat helpful; people say different things than they do
- Substack: If your retention beats your peers by a lot, raise your priceSome writers keep 90% of subscribers after a year yet never change price
- Crunchyroll: Raise the price $1-2 for existing subscribers too, not just new onesLittle churn from existing subscribers; new signups dip somewhat
- Disney+: Announce a price rise weeks before big new releases, effective after they startPress backlash at announcement; no subscriber numbers given
- Disney+: Launch at $5 a month with free carrier bundles, then raise pricesAbout 100M subscribers fast, but revenue per subscriber lagged Netflix
- Substack: Offer a top tier where fans choose their own priceMany fans pay well above the regular price