T3Media, Inc. (formerly Thought Equity Motion), a leading provider of cloud-based video management and licensing services, has announced the launch of a new licensing offering—
Paya ™ (Pay-ya), the world's index of licensable content™. To watch a short video that explains how Paya works, click
here.
Paya taps into the explosion of content creation by putting creators in control. Amateur as well as professional producers can sell photos and videos by turning their personal websites and social networks into a virtual storefront. Paya enables users to tag existing content, from sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and Facebook—with “buy” links to the Paya site. On the Paya site the customer will see a schedule of prices for various types of use. The image creator establishes the price he or she wants to charge and receives an 80% share of each sale. (See example
here of how Paya’s auto-tagging feature works on a Seracfilms clip found on Vimeo.)
If the customer finds a video or still image that they want to use the seller is notified and delivers the full size file within three days. The buyer confirms they received the file and Paya handles collecting the payment. Paya keeps 20% of the fee for their services and remits 80% to the seller. The normal delivery method assumes sellers do not have full size hi-res images available for immediate download. In cases where such hi-res files are stored online automatic downloads can be provided and the seller does not have to be directly involved in completing the transaction.
Currently the content available at Paya.com is about 90% video and 10% stills. As they grow they expect the split to eventually be in the range of 70% stills and 30% video. Currently about half the requests they receive come from customers finding a clip on YouTube that they would like to license. While customers can go directly to Paya.com to search for the content they need, it seems likely that more often content will be found on other sites. Then the customer will click through to license it.
A search of the Paya site itself shows a lot of very amateurish content mixed among occasional high level work – particularly in the still area. While understandable given the company’s strategy for acquiring content it may mean that professional users will not be inclined to search Paya.com for content as they may have to wade through to much imagery of no interest to find anything useful.
A bigger problem with each individual setting the price for his or her work is that amateurs have no idea what customers might be willing to pay for certain types of uses of their content. As a result the prices quoted are often much higher than most customers would be willing to pay for their planned uses -- particularly given the general quality. If customers discover that the prices for much of the content they would like to use are totally unreasonable, not only will the creators not make any sales, but customers will probably not bother to return to the site after an initial visit. There are also images on the site that are way under-priced, but the customer has no idea which image these might be until they open up each one – a very frustrating process for the customer.
Paya envisions a system where the imagery of professional sellers will be put in a separate category call “Paya Premium.” However, such a category does not seem to exist now and there is no way to search for premium work.
Kevin Schaff, CEO and Founder of T3Media points out that, “content creation has radically outpaced distribution and Paya offers powerful tools to unlock content’s value. Traditional, centralized licensing channels only serve a tiny fraction of the billions of photos and videos being created. Our company has nearly a decade of experience with content access and licensing and we believe that Paya is a game changer in opening up a more than $15 billion market for content in a wide range of existing and new uses.”
There is a special category of stock photos and videos featuring sellers selected by Paya to be of the highest professional quality.
Paya estimates that there are currently in the range of 100 million unique content assets (still images, illustrations and videos) available for licensing, but the content universe today exceeds 200 billion unique assets – and is growing rapidly. Customers want to use a lot of this other content that has not be created specifically for the purpose of licensing. If creators adopt the Paya model eventually and piece of content found on the Internet may be easily available for licensing.
Paya allows everyone, from professional photographers and videographers to average consumers with iPhones or DSLR digital cameras, to sell their work using social community reach and the speed of the Web. Paya creates a new direct channel between buyer and seller. For more information about how the site works check out Paya’s
Selling Toolkit provides logos and links, as well as a powerful “auto-tagging” feature that can automatically create links on a creator’s content on sites (e.g., YouTube or Flickr) to purchase listings on Paya.
“Looking forward to getting all our premium HD action sports, lifestyle, and adventure video listed. I like how easy it is to set up, we can use our own site and social networks. We’ve tagged our site and YouTube pages with Paya links and logos as well.” –
Carl Schneider,
GoodSportHD
“Paya.com allows me to quickly and efficiently market my existing photos and YouTube video clips with minimal effort. The simple, yet powerful, user interface is easy to understand and simple to customize. I’m very excited about Paya.com since it saves me time and opens a new revenue source for my content.” -
Garth McElroy,
Feathered Photos/
Wild Bird Video Productions
Paya bears watching as it could not only bring a lot of new content into the market, but give creators the opportunity to earn a much higher percentage of the fee paid by the customer.