Agencies/Distributors
Last July, photographer Carol Highsmith filed a
copyright infringement lawsuit against Getty Images for $1 billion after discovering that Getty and its subsidiaries had been charging customers fees to license her images of Americana.
According to a document filed with Companies House in the U.K. (see
here) it appears that Rex Features Limited (owned by Shutterstock) lent
Silverhub Media the money necessary to purchase
Splash. In return Rex Features has received very extensive control over the activities of Silverhub with regard to certain unspecified assets.
I was asked recently if I am optimistic that Shutterstock will maintain its momentum in 2017? The short answer is YES, I believe Shuttrstock’s 2017 growth will continue on the same track as it has in the last two years. In 2014 revenue growth was
39%. In 2015 it was
30% and in 2016 it is expected to be around
18%. I expect the company will continue to maintain its
DOWNWARD trend.
Pond5 has announced the launch of its new
Extended Licenses offering some of the highest levels of coverage, protection, and flexibility in the industry.
Celebrity photo agency Splash News was sold to Corbis in 2011 and has now been acquired by
SilverHub Media. SilverHub Media recently did an
exclusive deal with Shutterstock for worldwide representation of the images in its collection. Thus, the Splash images should now be available through Shutterstock.
Footage.net, the stock, archival and news footage search engine, has announce that preview clips from the Sherman Grinberg Film Library are available for viewing through Footage.net.
Emaji, Inc. a publicly traded development stage company based in Irvine, CA has announced the acquisition of 86.6 percent of the outstanding shares of Framepool AG (
www.framepool.com), a leading distributor of stock footage with headquarters in Munich, Germany.
Bridgeman Images is proud and excited to have won the tender for the exclusive representation of the British Library content in the UK. Bridgeman Images has worked for the British Library for many years across all our offices. We are delighted to have been appointed for all commercial and editorial licensing with the exception of branded products and scholarly uses which will remain with the British Library.
Let’s see if we can sell a few images for less. Check out the offers from Deposit Photos, 500px, ImageSource and Dreamstime.
A month after the Getty’s initial announcement of its
Unification Project Getty has announced that “Due to the complexity of the work required (in the iStock Royalties and Unification Project) we are pushing back most of the changes by about a month.”
In an effort to make it easier for art directors to find the right image quickly
Haystack has launched a site that lets users search multiple agency sites simultaneously. Andrew Rowat and technology developer Vache Asatryan created Haystack and call their site the
kayak.com for licensing images. They have 19 collections on the site already and say they will be adding a number of additional agency sites in the near future.
Once Getty’s
Unification Project is fully implemented one of the issues Getty and iStock photographers will need to consider is where to upload new images in order to minimize effort and maximize sales and revenue.
PicturEngine has gone public with a promotion to the 95% of design professionals that use stock photography. For the first time, buyers looking for a comprehensive all-in-one search tool can review and license photography from all industry sources – and get no duplicates.
Dissolve, the stock footage and photography provider, today announced the launch of three new premium stock footage collections, Dissolve Filmmaker™, Dissolve Auteur™, and Dissolve Elements™. The clips are available now for licensing and use in movie, TV, and commercial projects.
Dreamstime, with over 50 million stock images, and more than 16 million users has added 10,000 new images to its now 20,000 image library of free images available at
www.dreamstime.com/free-photos.?? Dreamstime also uses artificial intelligence-driven data from its companion site
Stockfreeimages.com to dynamically adjust recommended image content based on user preferences.
ITN, the UK’s leading supplier of independent broadcast news has agreed a multi-year partnership with
Getty Images, to license and distribute its award-winning news archive around the world from mid-2017. The distribution agreement will see over one million clips spanning more than 60 years of iconic news footage reach an even larger audience through Getty Images’ industry-leading global platform and expert international sales team servicing millions of buyers in nearly 200 countries.
The Getty
Unification Project that creates common platforms where both iStock and Getty Images contributors can upload their images and bring them into the Getty marketing system opens the door for a lot of potential new changes. If, or when, any of the following issues will come to fruition is unclear. But, Getty or iStock contributors and anyone considering offering images to either of these companies should consider the implications of these possible changes.
With Getty’s announcement in late October of the
Unification Timeline that is due to take effect January 3, 2017 most iStock contributors have focused on the fact that the minimum guaranteed royalty for a subscription download would be $0.02.
Shutterstock has reported Q3 2016 revenue of $123.1 million up 15% from $107.3 million compared to Q3 2015. The growth is due mainly to new customers and increased activity by enterprise clients. The average price per download during the quarter was $2.91, up from $2.76 in Q3 2015 and from $2.81 in Q2 2016. There were 41.2 million paid downloads in the quarter and 102.7 million still images and illustrations in the collection at the end of the quarter up 61% from 63.7 million a year ago.
Getty Images has launched a new commercial assignments venture,
Verbatim and is dedicating focus, resource and its world-leading photo expertise to capture the opportunity within the commercial sector to bring authentic visual storytelling to the fore.
Shutterstock has announced an exclusive three-year agreement with AM Stock-Cameo to make more than 60,000 HD clips available to Shutterstock users. This robust, diverse library features aerial footage, explosions, driving plates, and shots of hospitals, military bases, schools, and more. This is essential footage for transition and establishing shots.
Chai Jijun, Co-Founder and EVP of Visual China Group (VCG) provided a very detailed and complete picture of the stock photo business in China when he gave the keynote address at the
DMLA 2016 Conference last week. The following is his presentation.
Will crowd-sourcing images (UGC) or highly curated collections from professional creators be the future of stock photography? All the major suppliers of stock imagery are focused on acquiring more User Generated Content, but long range will that be the best way to grow revenue or create the most usable collections for image consumers? At the recent
DMLA 2016 Conference Brianna Wettlaufer, CEO of Stocky United, talked about an alternative to UGC and how to run a viable, sustainable and profitable photographer’s co-op.
Shutterstock, Inc. has signed a deal with the european pressphoto agency b.v. (epa) to distribute its unique collections of visual content globally. Beginning in January 2017, Shutterstock’s editorial customers, which include some of the largest media companies and publishing houses, will be able to license epa’s daily image content from around the world.
Adobe Stock has announced a partnership with Reuters that will enable creatives to access Reuters editorial content, as well as over 60 million royalty-free commercial photos, videos, illustrations, graphics, 3D assets and templates.