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Articles from June 2017
Justin Brinson of
PicturEngine posted a thoughful comment to last week’s article “
New Stock Image Distribution System Needed.” I’m re-posting his comments here because I want to be sure all my readers have a chance to consider them. I’ll add a few of my own comments below his.
I just received a press release from
Envato Elements that offers “inspiring and ready-to-use photos, templates, fonts and assets” for $29 a month. They say Envato Elements “now includes 200,000 hand picked photos” from its
PhotoDune collection of 9 million photos. (Actually, there are currently 244,085 photos in the Elements collection.)
Shutterstock, Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire
Flashstock Technology, Inc., a Toronto based company that enables the efficient creation of custom visual content through its proprietary platform, for approximately $50 million cash. Flashstock has a fast growing customer base of enterprise marketers seeking on-brand content to feed the ever growing visual demands of multiple marketing channels. By integrating Flashstock into its product offerings, Shutterstock will be able to offer a high-quality custom content product to its 1.7 million customers. The transaction is expected to close in July 2017.
Danita Delimont Stock Photography has launched a
new website design with large photos and roll over pop ups. The site’s new
Galleries section shows tightly edited collections of the best images in 48 of the most popular subject categories they have to offer.
The European Commission, which polices European Union competition rules, has imposed a €2.42 billion euros (
$2.72 Billion) fine on Google for breaching antitrust rules with its online shopping service. The ruling alleges that "Google has abused its market dominance as a search engine by giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service." Google was given 90 days to stop or face fines of up to 5 percent of the average daily worldwide turnover of parent company Alphabet.
Photographer’s tell me that
EyeEm has introduced a new model release strategy that is markedly simpler for photographers than the release strategy used by stock agencies and photographers for many years.
Hardly a day goes by that we don’t see a news story about how terrible stock photography is. Writer may pull a bunch of the worst and most inappropriate pictures from Shutterstock and other web sites and imply that these represent all stock photography. They encourage image users to ignore and stop using stock photography.
A number of mid-sized and specialist agencies should join together and explore the possibility of establishing a Non-Profit Online Distribution System. Stock photo prices have fallen dramatically in the last decade. Some RM photographers are earning, on average, less then 7% per-image-licensed of what they earned a decade ago. RF prices have seen similar declines, although not quite as severe. Seventy to 80% of traditional image licenses are for fees of $20 or less. More than 50% are for $10 or less. Throughout most of this period photographers have continued to produce new and better images. The cost of production has not declined.
Stock photo prices have fallen dramatically in the last decade. Some RM photographers are earning, on average, less then 7% per-image-licensed of what they earned a decade ago. RF prices have seen similar declines, although not quite as severe. Seventy to 80% of traditional image licenses are for fees of $20 or less. More than 50% are for $10 or less. Throughout most of this period photographers have continued to produce new and better images. The cost of production has not declined.
Photographers represented by the Photoshot in the United Kingdom tell me that they are having trouble getting responses to their emails and there has been no payment for a long time.
I’ve just returned from the 2017 CEPIC Congress in Berlin. Here are eight of my takeaways from the conference.
On June 14th a new
CEPIC executive board was elected to serve two years terms.
Alfonso Gutierrez of AGE Fotostock, current president of CEPIC was elected to another two year term.
The
MEGA Agency has expanded its staff in the US, UK and Germany to cope with the companies rapid growth. CEO Tom Tramborg said, “Our growth since launch has been phenomenal, so we are hiring new staff to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for Mega images.”
Many of the attendees at the CEPIC Congress are working to produce a collection of more “Premium” images as a way to set themselves apart from the massive collections produced to a great extent by amateur contributors. To do this they are editing tighter and separating out images of the highest “quality” and production values. The argument for this is that there are still customers willing to pay higher prices for better quality, unique images with top quality models and great production values.
The
New York Times 2020 Group published a report in January 2017 that said its daily reporting needed to become more visual. In April it was reported the day rate for freelance assignments would jump from a previous $200 to $250 (according to some contributors) to $450, with shorter assignments “that don’t meet the full day-rate requirement” paying out at $300, still higher than the previous full day rate.
Adobe Stock has announced new partnerships that will bolster its collection: news images from Reuters; sports photos from USA Today; 400,000 images from Stocksy.
Getty Images has announced an exclusive content distribution deal with drone pilot platform DroneBase. Beginning with over
200 creative video assets, the partnership will expand to include 360 stills and video and virtual-reality content.
One of the big questions in today’s stock photo industry is the future potential for stock video use. Recently, the Digital Media Licensing Association (DMLA) conducted a webinar on this subject. A video is available
here.
Stock photo agents tend to resist supplying photographers with much information about the specific images customers license. I would like to look back to the 1980s and 1990s and remind them how such information helped agencies grow their businesses and photographers produce more of what customers really wanted to buy.
According to
Pew Research Center the combined print and digital U.S. daily newspaper circulation fell an estimated 8% to 35 million and 38 million for Sunday, the lowest levels since 1945.
InMagine has announced to its contributors that it will be shutting down its website on 30 September 2017 and will no longer be distributing your images, vectors and/or video on our website after that date.
In less than two weeks representatives from the major stock photo agencies and distributors from around the world will be meeting at the
CEPIC Congress in Berlin. The stock photo industry has changed dramatically in the last decade or two and faces major challenges as it moves ahead.
Here are links to recent stories that deal with three major issues for the stock photo industry –
Revenue Growth Potential, Setting Bottom Line On Pricing and
Future Production Sources.