In the subscription environment customers pay for -- and the image creators receive a royalty for -- many images that are never used in any type of deliverable product. Nobody knows how many.
Adobe Stock has changed all that. Now Adobe gives users
free use to any images considered during the users design and creative processes. Users only pay for the images that actually end up in a deliverable product. As a result, creators may begin to see a significant decline in the number of images licensed.
Based on the figures
Shutterstock reports, I estimate that about $143 million of the company’s $328 million in sales in 2014 resulted from subscriptions. Customers pay $2,388 for a year’s subscription and about 20% more if they purchase month to month. However, I assume most subscription customer pay for the whole year.
Divide $2,388 into $143 million and we find that Shutterstock has approximately 59,883 subscription customers worldwide. We know, based on the royalty Shutterstock pays contributors, that they earn about $1.25 per image downloaded. Divide that $1.25 into $143 million and we find that about 114,400,000 downloads in 2014 resulted from subscription licensing.
Each customer with an annual subscription has the right to download 9,000 images per year, but based on the numbers above we know that on average each customer only downloads about 1,910 images per-year, or about 159 per-month. Of course some will download many more and other less.
Given Shutterstock’s Image-on-Demand pricing it would probably be cheaper to purchase a subscription if the customer actually uses more than 19 images a month. So it seems safe to assume that, on average, Shutterstock subscription customers download between 19 and 159 images per month.
Anecdotally, we know that subscription customers tend to download many more images than they actually use in their final deliverable products. They use them in their design process and often make several test designs before a final version is approved. They save images they think might be useful for still undefined future projects. As they search a collection it if often faster to download images they think might work as they come to them rather than making a final decision before downloading anything. No one has any idea of how many images are downloaded and never used because there is no reporting of actual use.
We do know that when customers are charged an additional fee for every image they download they tend to download many fewer images. Shutterstock’s Image-on-Demand customers download about one image for every ten downloaded through subscription. I have estimated that from all sources worldwide there were about 150 million images downloaded via subscriptions in 2014 and about 40 million where the customers paid for each image downloaded. Thus, I estimate that somewhere between 4 and 9 of all the images downloaded through a subscription never end up in a finished, deliverable product.
Adobe
Then we turn to the distinctive difference in the Adobe subscription offer. Adobe subscriptions start at $29.99 per month for 10 images and $2.99 for each additional image actually used. Adobe allows the user to download as many images as they wish, store them in the cloud, and use them in their design process, all at no charge. Customers only pay for the images they actually use in a finished, deliverable project.
So, if the average customer uses 159 images a month it would cost that customer $476 which is certainly more than the $199 Shutterstock charges for subscriptions. But, if the Shutterstock customer only actually uses 66 of the 159 images downloaded, or less, it would be cheaper to get them through Adobe.
The big question is how many of the huge number of downloads we have been seeing are actually being used in finished products. Only time will tell.