Japanese trade group finds that internet piracy BOOSTS sales of anime!

[thewayne]

They found that YouTube viewings after a series had stopped airing boosted sales but hurt rentals. Kind of odd. Sadly, the original report is only in Japanese, so kinda difficult to study. Fortunately the article is in English.

Now, anime is a specific entertainment slice, so it may not be applicable to all media categories.

http://torrentfreak.com/internet-piracy-boosts-anime-sales-study-concludes-110203/

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/02/04/2240221/Piracy-Boosts-Anime-Sales-Says-Japanese-Government-Study

Comments

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

I've read a couple of times that some Anime companies are using piracy numbers to decide what properties to sell where.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

[droewyn.livejournal.com]

Specifically, they note which series are being fan-subbed/dubbed and distributed the most, and those are the titles that get bumped up to the front of the line for translation and export.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Definitely a good way to use marketing analysis to target sales.

[silveradept]

From the culture that officially looks the other way, for the most part, about Comiket, this certainly sounds like the way they would be able to take the useful data even if they are officially opposed to the practice.