Video/Motion
According to aerial stock agency
HOsiHO it is becoming harder and harder for video images creators to earn enough to support themselves. See its appeal to Stock Image Banks
here. There has been a decline in assignments and prices for the use of video clips have declined so much that professional independent videographers are finding it difficult to justify continued production.
Shutterstock has reported Q3 2020 revenue of
$165.2 million up 4% compared to $159.1 million in Q2 2019 and down from $159.2 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download was
$3.79 per-image compared to $3.40 in Q3 2019 and $3.61 the previous quarter. Total image and video downloads for Q3 were 43.4 million compared to
46.3 million a year earlier and down from 44 million from the previous quarter. At the end of the quarter Shutterstock had over
350 million images and
20 million video clips in its collection, for a total of 370 million pieces of content.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced the addition of Editorial Video, a new premium, full-service editorial video offering that is now available for license. Critical Past, Celebrity Footage and Viral Hog are just a few of the new partners who will distribute their engaging video content worldwide through Shutterstock’s Editorial Video. In addition, current partners’ epa and London Entertainment will begin providing high-quality video via the new service.
Covid-19 has required everyone to re-think their business model and how they communicate with interested parties. Among the questions that footage professionals have are: How have they adapted to the exigencies of remote work? Is demand for archival content holding up? What can media companies do to fully unlock the commercial potential of their archival collections, and which technologies show the most promise in this evolution? See the webinar.
If photographers are serious about trying to earn a portion of their living from photography they should probably focus on producing video rather than still images. Or maybe when they organize a video shoot also shoot some still images of the same situations. Recently, I was talking to Cameron Gough of
Envato in Australia. He pointed out that the majority of the company’s earnings come from graphic related content and only about 10% to 20% of downloads are of still stock images. He also noted that video footage was the second highest type of content in demand without giving a percentage.
Recently, I was asked to provide a list of some of the best agencies that license footage. I provided the following list and recommended that the videographer try to put the same clips with multiple agencies, non-exclusively, in order to maximize sales. Pond5, Shutterstock, AdobeStock, iStock, Dissolve and Storyblocks.
Footage.net has published the results of the Footage Industry Pandemic Industry Survey, which captures a real-time snapshot of how footage companies are responding to the pandemic-related disruptions that began to take hold worldwide in early March.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced that its footage offering is now available for license in SD, HD, and 4K for customers using
iOS and
Android applications. With over 17 million videos in the collection, searching, saving and licensing footage content allows customers to create engaging video content from a mobile or tablet device.
In 2019 among the most successful creative industry events in New York were
footageMarketplace and
imageMarketplace. This year these two events have been combined and renamed
creativeMarketplace New York 2020. The event will be returning on April 1, 2020 to the Midtown Loft at 267 Fifth Avenue (29th St & 5th Av.) in New York City and will be open from 9:30am to 7:00pm.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced the launch of an unlimited monthly subscription for
Shutterstock Music. The new plan is geared toward digital content creators, including YouTubers, podcast producers, and social media managers, offering a cost-efficient solution to licensing unlimited high-quality tracks at $149 per month.
Shutterstock’s ongoing efforts to make the creative life of its customers easier continues with the launch of
reverse image search for video. This new feature makes it faster than ever to find exactly the right video clip in Shutterstock’s footage library.
Storyblocks will be closing the Marketplace segment of its business on September 10th and moving back to a subscription only offering. Contributors who have outstanding payouts will receive those payments sometime after September 10th even if the amount owed has not met the minimum payout requirement.
Shutterstock, has announced its new footage offering—
Shutterstock Elements. Over 3,000 elements captured on cinema-grade cameras and lenses have been added to the site, including transitions, lens flares, VFX (visual effects), video kits, film overlays, HUD (head-up display) and UI (user interface) elements. Compatible with all major video editing programs, Elements also includes detailed tutorials on how to optimize effects.
PicRights, a global leader in copyright enforcement, has added a new partner in Johannesburg, South Africa to monetize copyright infringements for the world’s leading news agencies, stock image agencies and independent photographers. No other copyright compliance service offers its clients as much geographical coverage of key markets around the world.
There are often two sides to an industry. The side the customer sees, and the "inside" that industry people see. This article is about the inside of the stock image industry and how Microstock has changed. It also offers photographers and videographers some ideas how to deal with the issues.
On May 9, 2019 Mark Milstein will be offering a seminar in New York on Time-based Metadata: The Key to Video Discoverability and Content Immortality. The presentation will be at B&H Photo. Click
here to register. You can also watch online.
Image creators need better information about the kind of content that is selling. Are customers looking at higher priced content? Can creators earn more money if their images are in a collection like Offset where images are licensed for much higher prices? Should creators produce more stills? Should they buy new equipment and start shooting video that sells for higher prices? Shutterstock’s
quarterly reports to investors aren’t very helpful in this regard.
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.)
Pond5 has launched a new Web resolution in an effort to grow the use of their clips in the social-media space. The price defaults to 20% of the contributors 4K master price (or 40% of HD price if it’s a native HD file). Contributors will be able to adjust this percentage in their account preferences or on the clip edit item page.
Shutterstock has announced
Shutterstock Select, a premium tier of royalty-free video content. The diverse collection of video clips includes exclusive content with everything from everyday moments to blockbuster action scenes, all captured by industry professionals using cinema-grade cameras and selected by our expert curators.
Shutterstock has announced a new content integration within Final Cut Pro X. The Shutterstock extension is the only stock footage extension to be integrated with the release of Final Cut Pro X and will enable seamless access to video, still image and music collections.
Storyblocks has analyzed a total of 60 million searches on
its site in 2018 to find the
50 most popular landmarks featured in creative works.
The U.S. Senate has passed the
FAA Reauthorization Act that will give authorities permission to shoot down private drones that are determined to be “threats.” The proposed law has sparked an outcry from civil liberties organizations.
ACSIL, Association of Commercial Stock Footage Licensors, has provided more information about the ACSIL and CLEAR panalists for its West Coast Footage Meet-Up in Los Angeles on Saturday, October 20, 2018 from 2pm to 7pm. The event will be held at Getty Images, Los Angeles, 6300 Wilshire Blvd, 16th Floor. For more about Meet-Up see
here. Attendance for footage buyers is free.
Getty Images has just done a deal with
www.animoto.com to provide unlimited video clips to Animoto video producers. Animoto says, “Now when you create marketing videos in Animoto, you'll have unlimited access to our stunning collection of stock photos and video clips at no extra cost beyond your subscription.”