Agencies/Distributors
Photographers represented by the Photoshot in the United Kingdom tell me that they are having trouble getting responses to their emails and there has been no payment for a long time.
The
MEGA Agency has expanded its staff in the US, UK and Germany to cope with the companies rapid growth. CEO Tom Tramborg said, “Our growth since launch has been phenomenal, so we are hiring new staff to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for Mega images.”
Adobe Stock has announced new partnerships that will bolster its collection: news images from Reuters; sports photos from USA Today; 400,000 images from Stocksy.
Getty Images has announced an exclusive content distribution deal with drone pilot platform DroneBase. Beginning with over
200 creative video assets, the partnership will expand to include 360 stills and video and virtual-reality content.
InMagine has announced to its contributors that it will be shutting down its website on 30 September 2017 and will no longer be distributing your images, vectors and/or video on our website after that date.
PantherMedia announces the launch of its Premium Collection to potential contributors around the world. Inspired by the Panther DNA their Premium Collection aspires to have an identifiable unique spirit that combines elegance and strength with a touch of danger.
In one of its recent promotions directed to customers,
Getty Images has identified three trending search terms, Mismatch, Heroines and Internet of Things. See what images you find using these terms.
Is Rights Managed(RM) licensing still a viable business model if your goal is to earn the maximum from your image collection? For most image creators the answer is clearly NO, particularly if part of the deal is to place your images exclusively with a single RM distributor.
Many of the non-sellers are very good images and would sell if customers only had a chance to see them. Back in January in as story entitled “
How Can Shutterstock Grow Revenue?” I outlined an idea for a two-tier pricing system that could not only work for Shutterstock, but many other distributors with large collections, and grow their revenue, even if there is no increase in the number of images downloaded.
Blend has launched a promotion they call “
Monthly Free Shoot.” Each month they will offer their customers all the images from one entire Premium Royalty Free shoot for unlimited, absolutely FREE use, according to the standard RF license.
On May 9, EyeEm announced the launch of
EyeEm Videography Early Creator program a stock video platform that will use the same artificial intelligence that powers the still-image option to automatically keyword and organize videos. Current EyeEm users can upload clips between 5 and 40 seconds long as the platform prepares to completely integrate video into the EyeEm platform later this year. The company has already tested the system by invitation-only, with selected users submitting video in the aerial, urban, travel, food, and nature categories.
Shutterstock makes a big deal about expanding its number of Enterprise customers. The last number they reported for Enterprise customers was 36,000 and just this week they said that Enterprise customers generate 32% of their revenue ($41.6 million for Q1 2017). Getty has an Enterprise program for its best customers which they call Premium Access. We have no idea how many customers fall into this category, but based on examining photographer sales reports my guess is that it is at least as many as Shutterstock, and probably more. A few years ago Getty said that any customer that spent $6,000 a year with them could qualify for Premium Access. I suspect that number is much lower now.
Cultura RM is the first RM Collection to join
PantherMedia after the company announced its new
Rights Managed licensing strategy last month.
Shutterstock has reported Q1 2017 revenue of $130.2 million. This revenue was up 12% from Q1 2016, but exactly the same as revenue in Q4 2016. Revenue per download increased 7% from $2.77 in Q1 2016 to about $2.96. Revenue per download in Q4 2016 was $3.02. At the end of the quarter there were 132 million images in the collection and 6.9 million video clips. This was up from 116.2 million images at the end of 2016.
The Mega Agency has signed an exclusive syndication partnership with the
New York Post, one of the most famous names in the American publishing world.
VideoBlocks is now accepting images for its new artist-friendly stock Photo Marketplace that will reward photo contributors with 100 percent commission from their sales. That 100% is $3.99 per still image download less third-party fees (like credit card charges) incurred when processing the transactions. Seeing this price many photographers may reject the offer out of hand. But, this is a very different business model from traditional stock agency businesses. Instead of paying a percentage royalty, contributors receive the full amount that the customer pays to use their work.
Panther Media has introduced a new approach to Rights Managed licensing and is opening the door to some really special photography. “We always had a clear position on the subject of rights managed licensing”, says Tomas Speight, CEO of Panther Media GmbH, “we would only ever do it if we could make it so easy it doesn’t need explaining”.
Adobe Stock has added new tools to make the image creation process easier and provide more efficient ways to upload and submit photo, video or other assets to Adobe Stock.
As of April 26, 2017 Alamy has made
contract changes that will be of interest to contributors. Most notably they will now pay contributors monthly whenever the Cleared Funds in the contributor’s account exceeds US $50. Previously, contributors were not paid until their Cleared Funds exceeded $US $75.
Getty Images has been focusing on
growing its subscription business. The theory is that subscriptions will make customers more dependent on the company for their future needs. Currently, subscriptions represent 37% to 38% of Getty’s Creative Revenue and about 50% of Editorial Revenue.
Adobe Stock has announced a partnership with
Pond5, further expanding the video offerings in Adobe Stock. Sourced from an international community of artists across a mix of modern,
highly sought after content themes, such as lifestyle, recreation, sports, cinematic and aerial footage, the addition of the Pond5 video library will give video producers and designers access to one of the industry’s largest and fastest-growing collections – all natively integrated into Creative Cloud applications.
From and investors point of view, Getty may have turned the corner. However, this may not benefit image creators, particularly those from North America and the Western Europe. It is my understanding that gross revenue in 2016 was about $840 million, up about 4% from around $808 million in 2015. Until 2016, Getty’s revenue declined steadily for about three years as they struggled to get their prices in line with their major competitor, Shutterstock.
Who is producing the majority of stock images that get used? Based on
Shutterstock’s 2014 and 2015 financial reports about 37% of the company’s gross revenue came from North America, 35% from Europe and 28% from the rest of the world. Given these numbers it seems reasonable to assume that since North America and Western Europe seem to be where most stock images are used that is probably where most are produced. Back in the 90s and early 00s that may have been the case, but no longer.
Each year there are three important events where representatives of stock photo agencies get together to share information –
CEPIC,
DMLA and
Visual Connections. These events are also good places for photographers to meet stock agents and get a better understanding of industry trends.
Get ready for 15% royalties. Getty has contacted some European agencies that supply the company with Royalty Free images for its Creative collection and told them that when their current contracts expire they will be terminated unless they agree to accept a 15% royalty.