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Anime streamer Crunchyroll swells past 1M paid subscribers

Crunchyroll, a purveyor of anime video online, just reached a milestone.

Brian Bennett Former Senior writer
Brian Bennett is a former senior writer for the home and outdoor section at CNET.
Joan E. Solsman Former Senior Reporter
Joan E. Solsman was CNET's senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She's reported from locations spanning from Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.
Expertise Streaming video, film, television and music; virtual, augmented and mixed reality; deep fakes and synthetic media; content moderation and misinformation online Credentials
  • Three Folio Eddie award wins: 2018 science & technology writing (Cartoon bunnies are hacking your brain), 2021 analysis (Deepfakes' election threat isn't what you'd think) and 2022 culture article (Apple's CODA Takes You Into an Inner World of Sign)
Brian Bennett
Joan E. Solsman
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The anime series that stream on Crunchyroll include "Yuri on Ice," which follows the career of a Japanese figure skater.

Crunchyroll

It turns out that anime fans will pay for their content fix, and in a big way. The online anime subscription service Crunchyroll said Thursday that paid memberships have surpassed the 1 million mark.

The milestone at San Francisco-based Crunchyroll, which is backed by telecom giant AT&T through a joint venture, is an example of how relatively niche genres can root out a paying audience for video online.

A million paid subscribers puts Crunchyroll in the same league as the CBS All Access and Showtime online TV subscriptions, which each had a million members as of July. (Editors' note: CBS is the parent company of CNET.)

HBO's high-profile HBO Now service this week disclosed it has 2 million subscribers.