Agencies/Distributors
Jacksonville, FL based
SuperStock has acquired Seattle based
Science Faction Images. The 40,000 tightly edited high-end science and high technology images in the Science Faction collection will allow SuperStock to “better serve our clients in publishing and advertising,” according to Lanny Ziering, CEO of SuperStock.
At least five private equity firms are bidding to buy
Getty Images from Hellman & Freedman (H&F) in a leveraged buyout worth an estimated $4 billion.
Based on our recent analysis of sales made by 193 of iStockphoto’s top sellers, total company downloads may have declined by as much as
22% in the first 6 months of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011. This story will walk you through how we collected the data, arrived at this number and explain why such a small sample of contributors is representative.
Professional photographers shooting travel photos have another new competitor. Foap.com is collecting iPhone photos from tourists and selling them for $10 each. To get started uploading pictures all the photographer needs to do is go to iTunes and download the
app.or go to
foap.com. The photographer receives a 50% royalty, payable through PayPal monthly.
ABC News VideoSource has upgraded and expanded its website to provide greater and easier access to ABC News’ vast archival footage online. Producers and researchers will now be able to browse, license and, in some cases, immediately access tens of thousands of video assets from ABC News’ expansive archives with the click of a mouse. It offers customers, including documentary filmmakers, educators or anyone with an interest in archival video footage, historically-rich news video from a vast collection spanning from 1896 to the present.
Following its acquisition of
Specialist Stock and its move into the footage side of the stock image business
Robert Harding World Imagery has created its Comprehensive Research Facility (CRF) which not only offers research of its own collections but will also research a range of satellite suppliers including BBC Motion Gallery, NHNZ, Footage Search and SKYWORKS amongst others.
Alamy has published an 11-page
white paper that examines the challenges current pricing and licensing models face. The paper summarizes a round table discussion where key industry decision makers, including picture buyers, photographers, journalists, commentators and stock image providers, examined the issue.
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.
Universal Images Group (UIG), owned by industry veteran George Sinclair (also the founder of the Virtual Picture Desk in 2002 and co-author of Britannica’s Image Quest), has acquired the business rights and digital library of the
MyLoupe and the
Ad Stock Images picture agencies.
In the near future photographers can expect to see are some dramatic
changes in the way subscriptions are defined. Until now, most
subscriptions have allowed customers to download 25 images per day for
the duration of the subscription ranging from 1
month to 1 year. Now a number of new options are being introduced.
Universal Images Group (UIG) has now opened an office in New York. This
is in addition to its offices in Chicago, USA; Rome, Italy and
Chelmsford in the UK. The business has achieved triple digit revenue
growth through distribution and electronic publishing in the past year
and it has become essential to provide a further production &
editing center in USA.
Evolve Images (
www.evolveimages.com) has announced that Lewis Blackwell has joined the company as Chief Creative Officer. Blackwell brings to Evolve an impressive array of credentials with leading experience in the image creation and licensing industry, as well as deep knowledge and active membership of the image-buying community.
Searching for a buyer for Getty Images or deciding whether to launch an
IPO may be the least of CEO Jonathan Klein’s worries these days. He’s
got to be looking at Shutterstock and Fotolia and anticipating that they
will use a good part of their new found wealth to build their premium
collections. When that happens, will these brands cut further into the
Getty Images franchise?
Late last week
Shutterstock sent out a press release introducing – a little pre-maturely it turns out – a new image discovery tool called “Shutterstock Instant.” In fact, if you go to the Shutterstock site there is no evidence that this feature exists. It turns out it is still a prototype. As with all prototypes when it is finally released to the public it may be quite a bit different than it is today.
It no longer makes sense to keep microstock and traditional stock separate. It’s time to look at integration. Read this article to understand why and what the industry needs to do to go about accomplishing such an integration.
123RF has launched 123RF Stock Footage. Clients can choose from over 75,000 high definition video clips at
www.123rf.com/stock-footage/ in addition to Royalty-Free Stock Photo and Illustrations.
Fotolia just received $150 million growth investment and
Shutterstock will have over $100 million from an IPO soon. What will they do with the money? Check out this story to see what we were able to glean from Shutterstock's S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission and from other industry sources.
Hellman & Friedman, the owners of Getty Images Inc, have retained Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co to examine a possible sale or public offering of the business. According to press reports a sale or IPO could value Getty Images at $4 billion. This move follows announcements last week by
Shutterstock and
Fotolia. Shutterstock hopes to raise $115 million in its IPO and Fotolia received a $150 million growth investment from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. for a 50% stake in the company
Will the stock photo market generate $5 billion annually in revenue by the end of 2012?
Don't You Believe It.In its recent S-1 filing Shutterstock quoted BBC Research as saying the "market for pre-shot commercial digital imagery is expected to exceed $5 billion in 2013." I think the market for stock still photos, illustration and footage will generate no more than $2 billion by the end of 2012.
StockFood, the leading food media agency, is adding a new product to its extensive visual collection: instructional Recipe Videos, offered with a package of additional complementary information services. The Recipe Video collection is targeted at the food, retail and hospitality industries, as well as a broad user group of online media.
123RF has announced a partnership agreement with Zcool, mainland China's
renowned creative designer platform for graphic designers. Designers
show their work on Zcool and there is a degree of sharing of the work.
A three-judge panel of the Washington State Court of Appeal has substantially
affirmed a trial court judgment against Corbis Corporation for Fraud,
Breach of Contract, Breach of the Duty of Good Faith and Fair Dealing,
Misappropriation of Trade Secrets and Unjust Enrichment over the ownership of Infoflows' Fedmark technology. The original jury awarded $36 million in damages. Following trial the judge reduced the damages to $12.74 million.
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P. (together with its affiliates,
"KKR"), today announced a $150 million growth equity investment in
Fotolia. In addition, KKR, TA Associates and Management worked with KKR
Capital Markets and a number of relationship banks to put in place a
$150 million senior financing for the Company.
Shutterstock has filed plans with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering (IPO). The company intends to list its stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SSTK” and hopes to raise around $115 million through this IPO. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering have yet to be decided.
In March it was reported by Moody’s and Standard & Poors that the
gross revenue for Getty Images in calendar 2011 was $945 million. This
figure, and how the various lines of business break out, provide some interesting insights into the state of the stock
photography business.