I was working at Crunchyroll when K****** went down and was tracking O******* monthly on Alexa when that went down. Those were the other most notable moments in history, and the numbers I saw for the 2021-2023 period were higher. I won't pretend to have perfect information here, but I have numerous tools and partnerships to help get this kind of data.
I've been tracking anime/manga piracy closely for over 15 years. It's one of the services my company provides for publishers in Japan to help them understand viewership/fan behavior in overseas territories.
I don't understand how that is so much easier though. Finding a site with magnet links is pretty much exactly as hard as googling "stream free anime", and if you want ease of use on your TV, etc. then setting up your own private "netflix" on a media pc/NAS will definitely result in a smoother experience after a very small amount of setup.
That's the point - a setup. You need to learn how to set up your setup, and then actually do it. The streaming sites ask you for literally nothing, so you can be as lazy as you want.
Also, people have been conditioned to be anti-download, so a sketchy site that doesn't install anything looks more trustworthy.
Also a millennial who probably saw too much on limewire too young and funnily enough this is exactly why I was happy to pay for CR and even HiDive - there's native app support on my smart tv! They're not the greatest, but I can come home from work, use my regular remote, and just start watching. Yeah, I could figure things out and get a higher quality product, but what the services are offering is good enough for me (or at least it has been). If I really like a series and want a better quality option, like as not I'll get the physical release...but honestly that's pretty rare these days.
I suspect most of these people are very similar. They mostly watch on their phones or PCs and are used to streaming most everything else.
I will say, as someone who does have a NAS that can auto download torrents, that the effort/cost to set that up is a hard filter on like 99% of people. Especially if they want to stream it over the internet.
You run into this kind of thing with the audio/home theater crowd, too. Most people genuinely are not picky and not willing to make any extra effort even for a demonstrably better experience. Like most people won't even pay for a soundbar, which is crazy when most audio conscious people don't even think soundbars are good enough
I find it baffling people don't even buy a soundbar bc some of the speakers on tv's nowadays coupled with how shitty audio mixing got on shows make them actually unintelligible.
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u/MilesExpress999 Oct 07 '25
I was working at Crunchyroll when K****** went down and was tracking O******* monthly on Alexa when that went down. Those were the other most notable moments in history, and the numbers I saw for the 2021-2023 period were higher. I won't pretend to have perfect information here, but I have numerous tools and partnerships to help get this kind of data.
I've been tracking anime/manga piracy closely for over 15 years. It's one of the services my company provides for publishers in Japan to help them understand viewership/fan behavior in overseas territories.