Alamy Reports Growth In Supply

9

July 31, 2006

Alamy added 711,939 new images to its site in Q2 2006, a drop in supply from the previous quarter, and ended the quarter with almost 6 million images in its database. Agencies uploaded fewer RF images than in the previous quarter and photographers significantly fewer RM images.

The average price per RF image licensed went up during the quarter from $206 to $226 but the percent of RF images licensed declined slightly. The decline in percent doesn't necessarily mean the company sold fewer RF images. If they actually sold more images in total (and they don't supply data that would enable us to calculate the number sold) it would be possible for them to have licensed rights to the same number of RF images as the previous quarter and for that number to still be a lower percentage of the total licensed.

For the fourth straight quarter the average price for an RM license continued to decline and it is now at $151.

The average price for an editorial use was $122 and the average price for a commercial use was $364. Both are down slightly from the previous quarter and editorial prices have been on a steady decline for the past year.

RF makes up 31 percent of the images on the site and these images generated 38% of the revenue in the quarter. Sixty-nine percent of the images are RM and they generated 62% of the revenue.

The percent of revenue from editorial licenses continued to rise and was at 71% while commercial revenue has dropped to 29%. The three major sellers in the industry all make the majority of their revenue from commercial sales and a relatively minor portion from the editorial market. In Alamy's case the reverse is true. The company makes a higher percentage of its sales from the editorial market which tends to use more RM that RF and pay lower prices than traditional RF. These figures are another indication that Alamy is not penetrating the commercial market to any great degree.

Alamy doesn't report figures that would enable me to calculate total images licensed or gross revenue so it is impossible to determine whether revenue or the number of units licensed is rising as rapidly as the number of images available. However, anecdotal information from various photographers and agencies indicates that while total sales are probably rising significantly the return-per-image that the suppliers see is actually falling.

The following is a detailed chart of the information reported by Alamy.