Microstock
A reader asked, “Is it known how much money is lost when premier and enterprise customers are able to get high resolution images that they use for sketching, internal presentation or pitches at subscription prices and only pay for the ones they use in print?”? The answer if
NO. Nobody had any idea, or is tracking, of how many images are used in this way compared to how many are actually used in delivered products. But, we do offer some related data of the loss through subscriptions compared to licensing based on use.
A reader asked, “In the article written by Martin Lisius (
Microstock-The Dark Side Of Image Licensing) he refers to non micro agencies as a possible answer to the low prices that photographers receive. When I search under the heading of macro stock on your site about the only name that comes up is Getty. Do I understand this correctly?”
In an opinion issued June 5th federal Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted only one part of Google’s motion for partial final judgment on the pleadings regarding the breach of contract and breach of implied covenant claims by
Dreamstime.com that relate to a Google Play agreement.
A few months ago, I evaluated which countries most
Shutterstock providers come from. Today, there should be some similar analysis of Adobe Stock's data, or Fotolia, because although the portfolios on both websites are identical, Adobe Stock will unfortunately see less information about it.
A few weeks ago, the publicly traded image agency Shutterstock had released its
second-quarter 2018 business figures. Among those figures, there was also the remarkable 204.2 million images Shutterstock currently offers. 41% of these were added in the last year alone.
On my Facebook page there was a lively discussion afterwards, regarding exactly where these many millions of pictures come from.
Getty Images, and
APO Group, a leading media relations consultancy and press release distribution service, have announced a wide-reaching collaboration to promote integrated text, photo and video solutions to organizations operating across Africa and the Middle East.
Topic Images in Korea has announced to its suppliers that will be launching its ‘Topic Collection’ on the PIXTA website in an effort to deliver better sales and service to their partner agencies and offer a broad range of quality contents to its customers. Topic was
acquired by the Japanese agency PIXTA in 2017.
A few years ago EyeEm decided to guarantee its photographers a minimum compensation for each image licensed through the Getty website regardless of what they received from Getty. Over the years they have steadily lowered that minimum and with the last sales report they have finally dropped the idea of a guaranteed minimum royalty. This article explores what happened.
One of the big questions for
Shutterstock is whether they can continue to grow the Enterprise segment of their business and how important that is to the eventual success of the company. In 2016 and 2017 they touted the success of Enterprise, but over the last 12 months Enterprise growth has been slowing and sales overall seem to be flattening.
Shutterstock has announced the launch of its new self-serve API subscription plans. For the first time, developers, startups, and small and mid-sized businesses can build products and features that seamlessly integrate Shutterstock’s image collection and enable in-app image reselling, providing an additional revenue stream for customers when their end-users license and download images.
The stock photo market in China may be bigger, and more lucrative than many people think. Gaopin Images tells Selling Stock that their average gross sale to Chinese customers in 2018 was $35,
17% more than what Getty is earning worldwide and
44% more than the gross China sales Getty is reporting to its contributors.
Shutterstock, has announced the renewal of its agreement with The Associated Press (AP) to distribute AP’s daily global photo output for license to customers based in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland.
VCG is still offline in China and there is no clear indication when they may be able to resume operations. It appears that VCG’s standard prices have ranged from tens to thousands of yuan. Thus, they could be as low $5 to $10 for the use of an image. Such prices seem to fit with the gross sales prices Getty Images has been reporting, minus a reasonable share for the selling agency. We also know that in a very few cases customers have paid well over $600 to use an image. However, It is unclear what the usage conditions have been for the extremely low prices or anything in between. Maybe VCG’s standard price packages have been very similar to those of Shutterstock or Adobe Stock. We don’t know.
As we
reported last week Visual China Group (VCG) in China was forced to close down itd website over the issue of offering the “Black Hole” photograph without giving “clear and visible” credit as required by the Creative Commons license.
Brianna Wettlaufer, former Co-Founder and CEO of
Stocksy, has joined
Adobe Stock as Head of Content. A longtime creative industry veteran and innovative entrepreneur Brianna has held numerous leadership roles in the stock photo industry including Vice President of Development at iStock among others. Brianna resigned her position at Stocksy last August for personal reasons.
Adobe has released its latest 2019 Visual Trend report called
Brand Stand. The trend report explores consumers’ desire for companies that align themselves with important social issues and how brands like Nike and Gillette are driving this trend with high-impact creative that takes a stand.
More and more photographers are expressing frustration with Getty Images and saying they are pulling their images. Many are looking for another distributor that will charge higher prices and offer a better royalty share. I hate to defend Getty, but to be fair today’s low prices are not all their fault. If we go back to the early 2000s Getty tried to keep prices at reasonable levels, but once iStock and Shutterstock came on the scene, and got some traction, there was no way for Getty to hold out forever.
Envato, headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, has solidified its place as one of the key players in the stock photography market with the acquisition of stock photo subscription service
Twenty20. The Los Angeles-based company that started out as
a way for people to print Instagram photos onto canvas, boasts more than 350,000 creative contributors to its library of more than 45 million authentic, crowd-sourced photos.
Rawpixel is an agency in the microstock arena that everyone in the stock photo business should be aware of. The company is headquartered in the UK, but its creative hub in Bangkok, Thailand. The company is the leading contributor to Shutterstock with over 1,000,000 pieces of content in the collection.
Getty Images personnel are telling some stock agency image suppliers that in 3 to 5 years there will be no more Rights Managed licensing. Everything will be RF. Currently, only 21% of the images in Getty’s Creative collection are RM. That is down from
55% in 2007, the last time Getty supplied detailed figures on gross sales of the various collections. Getty is also putting pressure on individual photographers to switch their RM images to RF.
PantherMedia is now representing the work of the largest provider of 360 °/VR media provider, 360Cities. 360 °/VR media are ideal for use in education, publishing, advertising and film, as well as in the development of mobile apps and games. 360Cities has been curating high-quality, fully 360 ° interactive panoramic photos for over 10 years, working with thousands of passionate VR photographers and videographers from around the world.
Shutterstock has reported Q4 2018 revenue of
$162.1 million up $6.7% compared to Q4 2017. (The comparison excludes the 2017 revenue from Webdam which was divested in Q1 2018.) The revenue was also up $9.5 million from Q3 2018. Revenue per download averaged $3.40 per image, compared to $3.33 in Q4 2017. (Much of this growth is probably due to increased sales of video content offered at much higher prices than still image content.)
An agent who has operated a small, specialist agency specializing in RM licensing for years contacted me recently and asked the following question. “I’m reworking (or trying to figure out) image pricing in bundle form (similar to OFFSET STOCK PHOTOS). I’m wondering if you’ve talked to them about whether their program might/might not be working?" Here’s my response.
Shutterstock will report its fourth quarter 2018 numbers on February 26, 2019. If the last three years are any indication, it is unlikely that there will be much evidence of additional sales growth. I’ve put together a chart of quarter-by-quarter sales since the beginning of 2014. The chart offers some interesting insights, particularly in regard to what has been happening in the last three years since the beginning of 2016.
Shutterstock has announced it is launching its first brand marketing campaign in six years. The
‘It’s not stock, it’s ShutterstockTM’ message is designed to showcase the unparalleled quality and depth of Shutterstock’s creative asset repository driven by more than 550,000 contributors from around the globe, as well as highlight the proprietary search and discovery technologies that inspire the creative professionals who use Shutterstock to find the perfect asset every time.