PhotoShelter recently surveyed 581 photo buyers and discovered that 22% said they would decrease their use of microstock in 2009. ? full three quarters of respondents said that their use of rights-managed images would increase or remain the same, and 37% planned to increase their use of traditional royalty-free images.
Of course, it all depends on which buyers you ask. PhotoShelter surveyed advertising agencies, graphic design firms, magazine publishers, corporate marketing departments, book publishers and non-profit organization (probably only the biggest). It is hard to imagine these figures would hold true for smaller non-profits, religious or educational organization, PowerPoint users or most of the millions of people finding pictures on the Web. Thus, traditional buyers might pull back from using microstock, but they represent such a small portion of microstock customers that it may not make a big difference. It is also hard to imagine creative professionals turning away from cheaper pictures in this economic climate, when everyone is trying to save a dollar.
On the other hand, iStockcharts—which tracks the sales of 24,165 iStockphoto contributors—reported 1,482,145 downloads in the three-week period ending Jan. 30 and only 1,320,604 in the following three weeks. That equals a 12% decline in sales for iStock in February. On the other hand, there was a holiday during the February period; perhaps that extra day would have made up a good portion of the difference.
While this may only be a temporary change in iStock’s otherwise steady growth, the numbers will be worth watching over the next several months.