Agencies/Distributors
Shutterstock has reported Q1 2018 revenue of
$153 million up $22.8 million compared to $130.2 million in Q1 2017. On a constant currency basis revenue grew about 12.8% compared to the first quarter of 2017. The revenue was also up $1.8 million from Q4 2017. Revenue per download averaged $3.40 per image, an 16.8% increase over Q1 2017.
Does anyone know. who owns the copyright to image
607387712 of Marilyn Monroe on Gettyimages.com. Evidently Getty doesn’t. It seems that Getty has the rights to license the image for “Standard Editorial Rights,” but that does not include commercial use rights or print cover rights. Evidently it also doesn’t include the right to license a use for wall décor because Getty will not license the image for that purpose.
SmugMug, an independent, family-run company, has acquired
Flickr from Verizon’s digital media subsidiary Oath. Flickr was founded in 2004 and sold to Yahoo in 2005. Yahoo, in turn, was acquired by Verizon in 2016 for
$4.83 billion. Verizon combined Flickr with AOL to create a new subsidiary called Oath.
As more and more photographers with experience at putting together high production value shoots are leaving the stock photo business major brands are beginning to have trouble finding the images they need in stock photo files. There are plenty of cheap images and plenty of candid, “real life” images, available as stock photos, but often they don’t fit the concepts brands have in mind.
Back in the 1990s and early 2000s stock photo agencies began placing more and more copies of the images they represented with distributors around the world. Initially, this resulted in significant increases in revenue for the image creators and the primary agencies. The Internet and agency consolidation has changed all that, particularly for the image creator. Now, in many cases the distributor system has simply become a way to siphon off a bigger portion of the gross fee paid by the customer to middlemen before the image creator gets his share.
Image Source has announced a new strategic partnership with high end brand, Luxy Images to deliver a bespoke (customized) image service direct to clients in Europe at
www.imagesource.com.
SilverHub Media Group, which has become a vibrant new player in the editorial and assignments space since its launch in 2016, today announces that it has combined its editorial and assignment brand, SilverHub, with
Wonderhatch, a freshly launched photographic and film assignment business.
Blend Image, at one time the leading stock photo production company in North America, has announced to its image creators that it is “winding down” operations, “trying to negotiate deals that might provide members with the option to move their content without having to resubmit it,” and making plans to otherwise return content by October 2018.
Some
Masterfile contributors report that the
BIA restructuring of the company last year hasn’t solved Masterfile’s financial problems. Once again the company is falling behind on paying current royalties on new sales. I asked Steve Pigeon, CEO of Masterfile, for clarification and an explanation of the problems. The following are his answers.
Over a billion searches are conducted annually on Gettyimages.com. Getty often provides information on a few search terms that are being used more frequently this year than in the previous year. Recently, they provided the following list and the percentage increase in 2017 compared to 2016.
Getty Images has announced that it will be retiring Thinkstock.com in mid-2019 and taking steps to transition Thinkstock customers over to Getty Images and iStock. Getty says this move will make way for a newer and overall improved experience for Thinkstock customers on Getty Images and iStock.
Dreamstime has filed a sweeping lawsuit against Google in California federal court alleging anticompetitive and discriminatory antitrust law violations as well as on-going breaches of contract, in order to use its monopoly position in online search to benefit its business partners –
Shutterstock, and of late
Getty Images – while leaving other stock photo sellers out in the cold.
Now that 500px has been
sold to VCG it appears that the 500px Marketplace is in transition. Major contributors to Marketplace are receiving notices that their agreements will be terminated effective June 27, 2018. It is not clear that Marketplace will cease all licensing of imagery at that time, but that appears to be the case.
If stock agencies really want to help their customers the most important thing they could do is make it possible for customers to search for just those image that have been previously “Used.” The biggest problems facing customers today is too much choice. Only a very small percentage of the images in the major agency collections are ever licensed, but customers have no way to distinguish the used images from those that have never been used.
I’ve been asked by an iStock exclusive contributor with more than 10,000 images in the collection if he should go non-exclusive and put his images with multiple agencies. This contributor has been regularly adding new images, but his gross revenue has been steadily declining month by month.
In
Aurora Photos latest newsletter to contributors President and Founder José Azel offered insights on the current state of the stock photo industry that are worth every stock photographer considering
The Football Association (FA), the governing body of English Football, has announced that it has awarded
SilverHub Media UK Ltd. (SilverHub) and
Shutterstock, Inc. an exclusive multi-year agreement to cover photography, distribution, and syndication services around key events and activities.
Shutterstock, has announced the expansion of its leadership team with three hires over the last six months. David Petts as Chief Revenue Officer, Lou Weiss joins the company as Chief Marketing Officer and Lisa Nadler, who joined the company in 2017, as Chief Human Resources Officer.
I have been looking at some of the Visual Trends 2018 reports. I hope they are helping customers because I don’t think they are doing much for image creators. Take
Getty’s trend report which evidently came out of the UK office. They say, “our Creative team analyzed 1 billion searches and 400 million imagery downloads on GettyImages.com, studied advertising trends, and examined pop culture shifts to predict three defining visual trends of 2018.
Every six months Dimmy Ran, Creative Content Director of HelloRF, a subsidiary of ZCOOL, prepares a detailed analysis of the search behaviors and sales trends of their Chinese customers. This information is sent to HelloRF contributors with the hope that it will help then create more competitive stock image content. While this information is specific to Chinese customer demand, it may also have relevance to customer demand in other countries around the world.
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.
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.