Shutterstock says it is excited to announce a new
annual music subscription for only
$199 per-year or $16.60 per-month. This subscription gives the user the freedom to download as many tracks as needed, whenever they need them, for one low yearly price. Those interested may visit the
pricing page to start their subscription.
It is important to note, that this price is for a Standard Subscription only. The
Standard Subscriptions only covers Web, Podcast, Point-of-sale and Industrial uses. If the customer wants to use sound on the radio, or TV; in apps, games or in a Film; or in advertising then they need an
Enhanced License. The price for an Enhanced License is
$419 per clip.
Shutterstock says, “This is an outstanding resource for anyone working with multiple clients and across multiple projects and channels — and for anyone who just wants more music for less money.”
Shutterstock’s annual music subscription service helps creatives, small business owners, marketers, and social media managers meet growing content demands while extending their brand’s reach, and empowers them to focus on their creative vision and business goals instead of worrying about the budget.
Unlimited song downloads also make it a breeze for YouTubers, vloggers, and podcast producers to keep music beds and background tracks fresh across numerous episodes and uploads. Of course, web-based creators aren’t the only professionals who can benefit from a royalty-free music library subscription — “real-world” uses are covered too, like conference presentations, trade show booths, brick and mortar stores, and more.
Discovering music to complement your creative projects takes no time at all, thanks to precise, easy-to-use filters that let you search by genre, mood, popularity, freshness, and more. With dozens of tracks added weekly, you’ve always got new music at your fingertips. Plus, our curated playlists ensure you’re on top of new trends, popular genres, and regional tastes.
It is interesting that just
last November Shutterstock started offering Unlimited high quality tracks for
$149 per-month. Evidently, that didn’t spark much in the way of demand so just a little over two months later Shutterstock feels they need to lower their prices even further to $199 per-year.
What’s This Mean For Creators
The price for music tracks is dramatically lower than the price for still images or illustrations. Image customers can purchase subscription that allow them to download up to 750 images a month for $199 per-month or $2,388 per year. That’s not Unlimited Downloads as it is with music, but it’s pretty close. If the customer only needs 50 images, or less, a month they can get a subscription for $99 a month or $1,188 per-year. Thus, most customers can probably get all the music they need for one-sixth of what they would have to pay for images.
Now, let’s look at what image creators receive on average for the images they have in the collection. Currently there are about 313 million images in the Shutterstock collection and the company licensed about 186 million total image uses in 2019 (at least 40% of the images in the collection are never licensed and probably
closer to 85% given the multiple uses of a few images.)
Total revenue generated in 2019 was about $650 million and Shutterstock pays out about 23% of that number or $150 million to creators. They have imagery from over 1,000,000 creators so the average creator will have received about $150.00 in 2019. Of course, a huge percentage of creators received a lot less than the average because a very small percentage received a lot more than $150.00.
We don’t know how many music tracks they have in their collection, or how many contributors are represented, but if the ratio of tracks to contributors is about the same as it is with image producers then the average music contributor can expect to receive one-sixth of $150 a year or about
$25 per-year for the effort they put into producing the music and uploading it to Shutterstock.