After reading my story “
Copyright Protection For Photos Is Dead” Paul Melcher wrote, “If there is no more copyright, then there is no more licensing. If there is no more photo licensing then there is no more reason for the existence of ‘Selling Stock’"
He may be right. There may not be much reason for Selling-Stock to continue to publish. I’ve been trying to help the few professionals, still hanging on and hoping for a change, to understand where the trends are headed. All in all, stock photography seems to be a business without much future – at least for creators.
I was talking to a photographer recently who has been in the business for two to three decades and was one of Getty’s leading sellers. At one point he had a four year stretch where his pictures sold for gross revenues of over one million dollars each year.
In 2020 some of those same pictures are still being licensed, but at least half the sales are for prices under $5.00 and about 30% are being licensed for prices under $1.00. It is amazing how much the value of professionally produced images has fallen.
This photographer always kept his images in the RM collection, and never submitted any as RF. Of course, Getty began making RM images available through
Premium Access deals over a decade ago and the percentage of images licensed through these deals has steadily increased. Basically, the PA deals were at RF prices, and on a per-picture basis often below RF prices.
Obviously, this photographer is no longer contributing new images to the collection. He may still shoot pictures from time-to-time for his own pleasure, but given the low prices, it’s not worth his time to bother submitting anything.
Up And Coming Photographers
I also feel some need to warn all the young people about the realities of the stock photography business. Many have high hopes and big dreams that are unlikely to ever be realized. However, few, if any, of them are willing to listen. They see a few big companies generating a lot of revenue licensing stock photography and are convinced they can get a reasonable piece of that revenue no matter how much the odds are stacked against them.
The important thing to understand is that in our Capitalist economy stockholders and much more important than the people who produce the products that are being sold or licensed. Big businesses must constantly feed investors. If that means they must sometimes exploit the people who create the product, so be it.
Just 2 days after Shutterstock announced its recent
cut in creator royalty rates they
told shareholders they would be receiving a
$0.17 per share dividend. Shareholders must be kept happy at all costs.
There are 35,630,000 shares of Shutterstock outstanding and the company had to come up with some way to pay out that
$6,057,100. It is also interesting that almost half of the shares are owned by Jon Oringer, by far the biggest beneficiary.
In 2019 Shutterstock’s total gross revenue was
$648.5 million, only
$25.2 million higher than 2018 gross revenue. Based on first quarter 2020 results, there is no prediction that there will be any revenue growth. The $6 million that will be paid out to shareholders is about
24% of total 2019 revenue growth. But who needs it more – shareholders or creators?