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Articles from February 2018
Lance and Laura Longwell made it their life mission to travel. Despite both working 9 to 5s they found time to explore the world and in doing so set up
TravelAddicts.net, an amazing site full of their adventures and stunning images from all corners of the globe. However, they soon had issues with image theft as their images were being used without permission. The Travel Addicts turned to
Copytrack, the online compensation recovery portal, for help.
A Shutterstock investor asked me recently, “What can Shutterstock do to grow revenue?” He went on, “worldwide, the number of customers willing to actually pay for the images they use seems to be flat, not growing. Shutterstock
cut prices In 2017. Downloads were up less than 2% compared to 2016. Meanwhile, they added enough new images to grow their collection by 46% in 2017 compared to 2016. Art directors say the size of the collection is making it harder, not easier, for them to search and find what they need. AI doesn’t seem to be solving the search problem."
Visual China Group (VCG) announced on Monday, February 26th that it has acquired 100% of 500PX, INC. (
500px) shares through its wholly-owned subsidiary, VCG Hong Kong LTD.
500px is one of the leading online visual creative communities in the world, founded in 2009 and based in Toronto, Canada. With more than 13 million professional and hobbyist photographers from over 195 countries and regions, the 500px community has produced over 120 million unique images diversity and creative trend. 500px is renowned globally for its community, image licensing, and custom photography.
There is a dangerous movement afoot; the idea that registration of your images on the blockchain is a cheap and simple alternative to registration with the United States Copyright Office. It is not.
The numbers
Shutterstock put out yesterday got me thinking. Is it really possible for the average price per download to steadily rise in a year when they have introduced new 10 and 50 image packs at lower costs to the customers? Do the download figures really mean the customers are using more of every category of imagery?
Depositphotos, a global stock photography, stock footage and editing tools provider, has launched the
Focused Collection, a marketplace of more than 400,000 premium images by selected artists which have previously never been available on stock photography platforms. The company partnered with 500px, Image Source Premium, Westend61, StockFood, MintImages and other major agencies to bring to life this collection of rare and authentic images, aiming to serve the needs of editors, websites, advertising agencies and corporate clients.
Shutterstock has reported Q4 2017 revenue of $151.8 million up $21.7 million, or 16.6% on a constant currency basis, compared to $130.2 million in Q4 2016. The revenue was also up $10.7& million from Q3 2017. Revenue per download averaged $3.33 per image, an 11% increase over Q4 2016. About 27% of revenue, or roughly $150.4 million, was paid out in royalties to contributors.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced that on January 4, 2018, the Company invested $15.0 million in convertible preferred shares issued by Zcool Network Technology Limited ("Zcoolto”). Zcool's primary business is the operation of an e-commerce platform in China whereby customers can pay to license content contributed by creative professionals. The platform has nearly six million registered users. Zcool has been the exclusive distributor of Shutterstock creative content in China since 2014.
Since its launch in 2013
Unsplash has been providing a platform where photographers can upload their images for the enjoyment of others. The photographers allow anyone to use their images for free, for any purpose and without credit. While the photo library only contains 400,000 photos (compared to the 180 million on Shutterstock), the company says it’s had more than 48 billion photo views and 310 million photo downloads since launch. Currently, it is seeing 10 photo downloads per second.
Copytrack has completed its
Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and will be launching a Global Copyright Register (GCR) this summer that will work in conjunction with their Global Copyright Enfocement services (copytrack.com). With their Presale and ICO they have a total of 8,600 investors who have purchased around 16 million tokens. The purchase of images found on the GCR will be tracked in a Blockchain and paid for using cryptocurrency tokens.
Judge Forrest of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in
Goldman v. Breitbart News, LLC has ruled in favor of photographer Justin Goldman that embedding a tweet that contains a copyright protected photo
does, in fact, constitute a copyright violation. If the ruling is upheld, it could have a major impact on the way media and many other Internet users get some of their imagery.
Six prominent footage companies have signed on so far to take part in
Footage.net's 2018 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) exhibition, set to take place April 9-12 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Current participants include Bridgeman Images, FootageBank, Global ImageWorks, INA, Reelin' in the Years Productions and the WPA Film Library. More footage companies are expected to sign on soon.
The Poynter Institute, headquartered in St. Petersburg, FL, is considered by many to be a global leader in journalism education. Poynter claims to be “the world’s leading instructor, innovator, convener and resource for anyone who aspires to engage and inform citizens in 21st Century democracies.” In a
recent article formatted as a conversation between two Poynter employees -- Kristen Hare and Ren LaForme -- the two took the position that it’s hard to get anyone to read an online article if it is not accompanied with an image.
Getting images into the Getty Images collection so potential customers might see them has just become more time consuming for image creators. As of February 9th, 2018 Getty has ended its practice of adding custom keywords to the basic list of words photographers submit.
After I published my article proposing the development of an
Image Creator Locator or ICL, several readers pointed out that the
Plus Registry is designed to accomplish the same goal. See here for how ICL differs from Plus in its aims.
Joe Sohm, the creator of
Visions of America has been crisscrossing the U.S. for more that 30 years documenting the country as he sees it in all its beauty and uniqueness. From Presidential Campaigns of both parties to Landscapes & Cityscapes, Sohm is one of the most prolific Americana photographers. He has approximately 33,000 images in his collection. The collection is represented by the three major agencies – Getty Images, AdobeStock and Shutterstock – as well as a host of other agencies around the world.
Getty Images and Google have announced an agreement that includes a multi-year global licensing partnership, enabling Google to use Getty Images’ content within its various products and services. “This agreement between Getty Images and Google sets the stage for a very productive, collaborative relationship between our companies,” said Dawn Airey, CEO, Getty Images. “We will license our market leading content to Google, working closely with them to improve attribution of our contributors’ work and thereby growing the ecosystem.”
I’ve been hearing more and more complaints from experienced photographers about the low royalties they are receiving for the use of their images – often less than $1.00. In many cases these low figures result because the primary agent with whom they placed their images is using a secondary distributor to actually handle the licensing to the customer.
As of January 31st Anthony Harris has stepped down as CEO of Image Source and Christina Vaughan has returned to the CEO position. In 2015 Christina turned over her leadership of Image Source to Mr. Harris, but remained a small shareholder. She moved to the position of CEO at
CueSongs, and oversaw the initial deployment and beta testing of the new CuePro platform, which won the Technology Strategy Board competition in 2014 and received a substantial grant to develop its “Frictionless Music Licensing for Online Broadcast”.
IPA,
Independent Photo Agency, one of the most important Italian photo agencies, has announced the acquisition of
Photofoyer, which specializes in interior design and architecture photography. The purpose of the acquisition is to start a strategic project for the expansion of IPA’s creative sector, increasing its operations both at the European and extra-European context.
Lamark is doing a survey on metadata practices to determine what photographer are doing to try to protect their images from unauthorized use. I urge all photographers to complete this
short survey. This data will help Lamark devise better and easier to use systems that insure that photographers will be properly paid when their images are used.
If you’re interested in news about the stock footage industry you ought to be reading the
Stock Footage Newsroom blog.
In a recent edition David Seevers of
Footage.net has provided a very detailed report on the highlights of what happened in the stock footage business in 2017. Footage.net If provides serious footage researchers with the opportunity to search across 30 of the world’s top stock footage archives with a single search, enabling researchers to find better content and save time. Footage.net also offers powerful tools for locating hard-to-find stock footage and simplifying the footage search process.
I was asked recently, “Kindly tell me how I can determine the market potential of the stock image industry.” Here’s my short answer. Your question doesn’t have an easy answer. I think the annual gross revenue, worldwide, generated by the licensing of stock imagery is about $2.5 billion. This breaks down to approximately $600 million for footage, $400 million for editorial, news oriented images and $1.5 billion for generic still images and illustration. About one-third of the $1.5 billion is for illustration, not photographs.
At some point in the future Blockchains may play a significant role in the licensing of stock imagery. My role is to try to provide my readers with a simplified, not too technical, understanding of the potential benefits, and risks, of blockchain technology so the readers might better plan their individual futures.
If you’re an image creator, or a stock photography customer and you’ve been thinking about getting involved with the new
KodakOne you might want to think again. The initial coin offering (ICO) of KodakCoin, that was supposed to launch on January 31st, has been delayed several weeks. In order to eventually license rights to images it will be necessary to use KodakCoins.
The Barcelona-based photolibrary
www.album-online.com has upgraded its website, designed & powered by its own internal team, with some improvements which will benefit photobuyers, including reverse image search, and bigger thumbnails so users can see if the picture meets their needs more quickly.