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Articles from January 2018
Shutterstock has announced that in its 14-year history it has licensed more than 1 billion royalty free images, videos and music tracks across all of its businesses. Currently the company has more than 170 million commercial images, 40 million editorial images and 9 million video clips in its collections.
After publishing several stories on blockchain technology as it relates to image licensing, it has been unclear to me how customers with dollars in their pocket would conduct a transaction to license use of a photo and how the image creator would actually gets dollars they can use to buy groceries.
It used to be when a major corporation like British Petroleum (BP) went looking new images their art department would come up with a rather specific concept for what they needed. Then they would review photographer portfolios and hire a photographer to do the job. They would pay $1,500 per day, plus expenses for the shoot. Leading, experienced photographers often received significantly higher day rates.
Blockchain tracking of stock image licensing may be a way to improve the working environment for image creators without getting involved in cryptocurrencies. One of the things that concerns image creators when they hear discussions about blockchains is that they always seem to be tied to collecting money in some type of “new economy” cryptocurrency like
KodakCoin.
One of the biggest problems in the stock image business is unauthorized use. Many of those making unauthorized uses would be happy to ask permission and compensate the creator,
if they could just find them. When they find an image on a website other than the creators there is usually no information about who the creator is or how to locate him/her.
It is that time of year when stock agencies report on image trends they expect to see in the coming year. The purpose of these reports is to help photographers focus their production on the subject matter the agencies think will be in demand in the coming year.
If you want to earn more for the images you produce, and for there to be less unauthorized use, maybe you should be praying that your images won’t get used by customers online. For many this may sound like heresy, or at the very least, ridiculous. Doesn’t everyone want more people to see and use their images? Consider this analysis.
Shutterstock has released its
2018 Creative Trends Report. Every year, Shutterstock customers across the world make billions of searches for images, footage, and music. Shutterstock creative teams analyze this search and download data to discover the biggest year-over-year increases and identify the trends they believe will continue to grow throughout 2018.
One Shutterstock photographer who has resided in various countries at different times reports that the Shutterstock search engine seems to use the contributor’s IP address as part of the algorithm to rank images higher or lower in the search return order based on location.
You’ve seen all the stories about how stock photography is junk, will chase customers away and destroy a company’s business. Well now Darren Johnson, publisher of Campus News, says that Stock Photography actually
Performs Better for his publication
Than Original Photography
After publishing the
story on IPStock on Friday I had some further questions particularly in regard to how customers actually pay for the use of images and how the photographers would receive payment. Askold Romanov, answered my questions.
In support of #SmallClaimsDay all U.S. image creators, stock agents (and friends of the creative community) are being asked to write their Congresspersons before January 17, 2018 and request that they co-sponsor H.R. 3945. By using this site (
http://copyrightalliance.org/get-involved/add-your-voice/ ) sending letters is quick and easy to do!
When I first heard about a blockchain based strategy for licensing stock images it sounded like it might have some potential. What photographer wouldn’t like to be able set the price for the licensing of his/her images, have customers pay those prices, and have most of the price the customer pays immediately credited to the photographer’s account. Sounds great.
IPStock, run by Geneva based company Intellectual Property Depository and Management (IPDM) that develops a unique fintech platform for visual digital assets, has announced the launch of pre-ICO for its blockchain registry of visual digital content copyrights.
Kodak have just started their new project “KodakOne” and already their shares have skyrocketed. In 2012 it was a different story as they were on the verge of bankruptcy, but they are slowly fighting their way back with their new idea. But what’s all the hype around the new project “KodakOne”?
The following are links to some 2017 and early 2018 stories that might be worth reviewing as we move into the new year.
Kodak and
WENN Digital, in a licensing partnership, have announced the launch of the KODAKOne image rights management platform utilizing blockchain technology and KODAKCoin, a photo-centric cryptocurrency to empower photographers and agencies to take greater control in image rights management.
Copytrack, the German organization that tracks use of images on the Internet and then pursues infringers when an unauthorized use is discovered has announced that its “blockchain powered copyright registry and enforcement platform is preparing the enter the second round of the crowdsale” as a way of raising revenue for future expansion.
It is hard to find a stock photographer who has been in business for any period of time who can point to rising revenue per-image-licensed. Some who have dramatically increased the size of their collections may be able to point to overall annual revenue growth, but not growth per-image-in-the-collection.
Recently, Owen Franken asked how I would deal with a request for personal blog use of an image. He receives such requests rarely. He received the following from Andrew Skladowski in Australia. See my comments on things to consider regarding such a request.
Broadly, there are two different categories of photographer who produce stock images. I believe way less than 7% of Shutterstock contributors are earning enough annually to view stock photography as a career. A contributor probably needs a collection of at least 20,000 images to earn a reasonable amount of money by U.S. standards. At least 93% of Shutterstock contributors have fewer than 1,000 images in the collection and their average income is less than $200 annually. See the breakdowns.
At the end of 2016 Shutterstock had 190,000 contributors. By May 2017 that number was up to 225,000 and in September when they launched
Shutterstock Custom Content they said they had 250,000 contributors. Presumably the number was even higher at the end of the year.
Heritage Images Partnership has announced that their company CEO and friend Sheldon Marshall passed away on 17 December 2017 during an expedition to Mount Everest; one of his long standing dreams. Marshall had been active in the stock photo industry for decades.
Following its
Visual Trends predictions for 2018, Adobe recently released a deep analysis of its first trend –
Silence and Solitude. In this chaotic, always-on world where people are bombarded with constant speeds and feeds, the Adobe is seeing a growing demand for images that convey comfort and regeneration.
One of the things I said in my
2018 Predictions is: “Image creator may be given more useful information about what is in demand.” In recent years we’ve seen a huge growth in the number of creators entering the stock photo business as well as images added to the collections. But we’re no longer seeing a corresponding growth in revenue.
Here are a few stock photo industry changes that I predict will occur before 2019.
1 – At least one radically new and different business model for licensing stock images will be introduced. 2 – Customers will become more disenchanted with the major stock photo distributors. 3 - Image creators may be given more useful information about what is in demand.
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