Agencies/Distributors
Scoopshot, reports that over 500,000 photographers and videographers from 177 countries contribute images to its service and that more than 70 leading media companies and brands including USA Today, News Corp Australia, Apple Daily, WAZ, Fiat, Finnair, Oxfam and many others use Scoopshot to gain instant access to a global pool of Scoopshooters. In the US, the Scoopshot user base has increased from 14,000 to nearly 50,000 in just six weeks.
Paul Melcher’s latest on the “
New Photo Agencies” is worth reading. He discusses the Community Builders, the Scrapers, the On Demanders and the Hybrids, and notes that “the barriers between pros and casual photographers are going to completely vanish.”
Every once in a while someone asks me if Corbis is a place to put their images? Corbis has a nice looking website and I assume they are still making a reasonable number of sales, but I never hear much about them. Photographers never tell me the are happy with Corbis sales, either in volume or price.
Launched in March 2013,
Stocksy continues to grow dramatically. The company is paying out almost $200,000 a month in royalties and is on tract to generate something in the neighborhood of $5 million in gross revenue in 2014.
PantherMedia has added a handpicked collection of fancy images to its archive of more than 28 million images. The
Premium Collection is composed of special interest images like architecture, food, ecology and sustainability as well as people and lifestlye.
Most agencies are constantly trying to add new images to their collections, but a huge percentage of the images they already have are never licensed. Photographers are constantly encouraged to produce more and better pictures. If they cut back on production sales often decline. Since there is no way to be sure what customers will want in the future, agencies hope that if they keep adding new images they will eventually stumble onto something a future customer will want to buy.
Image Source, has launched an uplifting email marketing campaign designed to inspire creative professionals at the start of the working week. Subscribers will be treated to an email with a motivational, thought provoking message from specially selected experts in the creative industry every Monday, straight to their inbox.
DisabilityImages.com, a leading stock source for high quality stock images of real people with real disabilities, has agreed to represent selected imagery from
Design Pics. DisabilityImages serves a select group of customers with narrowly focused and specific needs. The company has developed a strong reputation in this niche, and has a thorough understanding of the needs of customers within this community.
TT News Agency, NTB, Scanpix Denmark and Scanpix Baltics have announced the formation of the
Scandinavian Photo Alliance. The core of the new alliance is the former Scanpix group. The SPA expects to work on pan-Scandinavian initiatives spanning both editorial and commercial areas.
Blend Images and
Danita Delimont Stock Photography have recently joined the
IMGembed community. IMGembed went live in March 2013 and currently has millions of images in its collection. Previously, we have reported on
Getty’s embedding strategy and PressFoto’s
ImageRent. IMGembed offers another approach to the pay-per-view strategy for monetizing images.
iStock has named May 14, 2014 “100% Royalty Day.” As part of it’s efforts to celebrate Small Business Week in the United States iStock will pay all exclusive contributors 100% of all revenue collected on May 14, 2014 through cash and credit card file downloads.
Shutterstock has reported $72.8 million in revenue and total downloads of 29.7 million for Q1 2014. About 28% of the revenue was paid out to contributors in royalties. At the end of the quarter the company has 407 employees worldwide and over 55,000 active contributors.
A subscriber just pointed out that at the bottom of the search return page on
www.gettyimages.com they are now encouraging customers to go to
iStock. He did a search for travel and at the bottom of the first page after the customer has looked at only 100 thumbnails she is encouraged in big bold letters to:
Microstock image contributors are removing images from Fotolia in a boycott of Fotolia’s
Dollar Photo Club (DPC) subscription service. So far more than 400,000 images have been removed from Fotolia since April 25, 2014.
It’s No Longer About The Image. It’s About The Data That Can Be Mined Using Images. The value of images is declining. The value of data that can be mined by tracking image use is increasing.
Buyers looking for microstock images want to know which of the many available sources offers the best licensing models, terms and price. Now with the beta version of
http://www.microstock.photos customers can simultaneously check the offerings of 9 or the most popular microstock sites and see who offers the best deal. This search tool is free to use.
Image Makers Stock Photography, Art & Illustration is looking for expressions of interest in purchasing the agency’s inventory which consists of 32,230 tightly-edited and extensively-keyworded digital images. Currently there are 172 individual artists, photographers & illustrators under contract.
PressFoto, has launched
ImageRent, a new service that makes more than 3.5 million stock photos immediately available for commercial, editorial or personal use online at a minimal cost. The maximum file sizes available are 72dpi, 600x600px web size images.
The creative team of Getty Images has just released a 132 page online book that gives examples and discusses the kind of photography customers currently want. It’s called
Creative InFocus and provides a glimpse of the new ideas and flavors the Getty team expects imagery to grow into over the next year. It is well worth a read.
Getty photographers are getting some surprising insights into the use of their images on Pinterest as they review their Getty sales reports this month. For many photographers over half the reported sales are for “Pinterest/Portal” usage. The gross fee paid to Getty for such usages is $0.03 and the photographer’s royalty share is $0.01.
Stocktrek Images with specialized image collections in Healthcare and Biomedical Science, Armed Forces, Military Aviation, Space, Weather, Astronomy and Dinosaur Art has introduced a $35 price for web and mobile use of its images. The new web and mobile sizes of 600-800 pixels are ideal for use on web sites, online ads, digital magazines, periodicals, mobile applications, tablets, and other handheld devices.
Getty Images has launched its iStock
subscription offering in an attempt to compete with
Shutterstock. There are two levels of iStock subscriptions – iStock Essentials and iStock Signature. With iStock’s offering customers can download 250 images a month with the monthly plan or 750 images a month with the annual plan. With Shutterstock there is a daily limit of 25 images a day (750 a month) regardless of which plan you purchase.
Getty Images has announced the call for entries for its
Getty Images’ grants programs for 2014. The grants will include – The
Grants for Editorial Photography,
Creative Grants and the
Contour by Getty Images Portrait Prize – as well as the
Emerging Talent Award. The deadline for entry and Applications is May 15, 2014 by 11:59 p.m. GMT (London Time). For more information see
http://www.gettyimages.com/grants.
Dreamstime has released a plugin for WordPress that enables WordPress users to easily access and embed free and commercial content from Dreamtime’s 22.5 million image library.
On its web site for Flickr contributors Getty asks, “What are the average prices for RM and RF?” and then gives the following answer. “The average licensing fee for royalty free ranges from $175 to $225. And for rights managed licensing, keeping in mind that uses and fees vary widely; the average is around $550-$650.”