For the last four years the Australian Government has published an annual "Consumer Survey on online copyright infringement". The
103 page report focuses on the unlicensed use of Music, Video Games, Movies, TV, e-Books and PC software. Unfortunately, it does not deal the unlicensed use of photographs.
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.
I’m regularly asked for my thoughts on the size of the worldwide market for stock photography in terms of gross revenue and the potential for market growth. I currently estimate the worldwide sale of stock imagery to be about $2.75 billion divided among four different product types - Microstock, Creative Stills, Editorial and Footage or Video. Further details of the breakdown are provided in this story.
There is very little likelihood that the overall market will grow if the stock photo business continues on its current course. In order to have growth at least four major strategy changes are needed. I see no likelihood that any of these will occur.
The European stock photography and video agency PantherMedia, based in Munich, has announced the introduction of a new 10 photo downloads subscription. All PantherMedia’s subscriptions now include access for up to 3 team members.
Shutterstock has reported Q3 2018 revenue of
$151.6 million up $7.5% million compared to Q3 2017. (The comparison excludes the 2017 revenue from
Webdam which was divested in Q1 2018.) Gross revenue was and down from $156.6 million in Q2 2018. Revenue per download averaged
$3.40 per image, compared to $3.23 in Q3 2017. (Much of this growth is probably due to increased sales of video content offered at much higher prices than still image content.)
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reinstated copyright infringement claims by sports photographers against commercial users of their photographs, finding that the licenses that the photographers had granted to one of those users did not permit it to grant a sublicense to the other to use those photographs for free.
Spinelli, et al. v. National Football League, et al.,
Case No. 17-cv-0673 (2d Cir. Sept. 11, 2018) (Lynch, J).
The following is an update of information I have supplied previously about the Image Creator Locator concept. The previous stories can be found
here,
here,
here and
here.
The images created by photographers who are trying to earn a portion of their living from their work represent very small minority of the total images that can be found on the Internet. Every day the number of images on the Internet that require licensing becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of the total. While there may be 2 billion unique images online that photographers have on offer for licensing, that number is a very small percentage of the total images available for viewing.
The last thing this industry needs is lower prices. However, it often seems that whenever someone wants to start a new business, or grow an existing one, they conclude that the most important distinguishing characteristic compared to their competitor must be lower prices. The new
Onepixel offering clearly illustrates this point. A group of people with experience in the industry put together a new site. Based on their experience they are well aware of the type images in greatest demand by customers. They have previously built relationships with many of the creators of such images. They have a good idea for offering a small highly curated collection of images that will make it much easier for customers to quickly find what they need.