Agencies/Distributors
After reading my story on
why usage fees will continue to decline Larry Minden wrote, “Is there no one among the thousands upon thousands represented by Alamy who will stand up to those idiots and tell them a 50-year license is unneeded and an absurd bastardization of an RM license?" This story explains why complaints from suppliers are unlikely to have much effect in the long term outcome.
Alamy has announced that its US sales of the company’s images have
increased 30% in the past year and as a result they have contracted with
the New York Internet Company (NYI) will oversee its infrastructure
upgrade for North America, starting in New York.
Getty Images has notified agencies (Image Partners), whose work is currently being licensed by Photolibrary, of Getty’s intention to “retire” (close down) all the Photolibrary websites during the last quarter of 2011.
Alamy has over 24 million images online after adding over one million
celebrity images. The company represents over 570 of the world’s
leading stock and specialist agencies and a vast array of photographers
from every corner of the globe.
Today, the biggest problem for professional photographers is how to get their images seen by potential customers. Most photographers would agree that the way to get the widest possible exposure for their work is to get their images on gettyimages.com. Sources at Getty Images tell me that 96% of the company’s sales come from images customers find on the first three pages of the search returns. Customers have a choice as to how many thumbnails they want to see on any given page -- with a maximum of 100 allowed -- so three pages of images would be a maximum of 300.
There are strong indications that iStock's introduction of higher priced brands has resulted in the company licensing fewer images. In addition many of its customers seem to be turning away from iStock and goint to other microstock sites to purchase the images they need. One non-exclusive photographer with many best selling recreation images on both iStock and Shutterstock reports that his images on Shutterstock are now outselling those on iStock by 3 to 1 while a year ago the reverse was true. Other photographers confirm this trend.
BigStock is introducing a new strategy for licensing microstock images. Their pay-as-you-go system allows customers to pay with a credit card for only those images they want to use immediately and not be forced to purchase packages of credits. There is no minimum purchase.
At the CEPIC Congress in Istanbul a panel of Asian stock agents provided insights into the current market for stock photography in Asia. The panel included: Sandeep Mahewsari of Imagebazaar (
www.imagebazaar.com) in India, Daphne Fu of Panorama Images (
www.panoramastock.com) in China, Daniel Kang of Image Republic (
www.irepublic.kr) in Korea, and Ryusel Yoshimoto of amanaimages (
www.amanaimages.com) in Japan.
On May 23, 2011 in an open letter to contributors Andy Saunders, Vice President of Creative Imagery for Getty Images, outlined what Getty sees as the future of creative co ntent. His analysis will be of interest to everyone engaged in the stock photo business and can be found at
http://www.gettyimages.com/contributors, in the bottom right corner of the contributor log-in page. No password is necessary to view this link.
During the New Media Conference at the CEPIC Congress in Istanbul a panel of picture buyers offered their views on what they are looking for from stock photo collections. Lewis Blackwell moderated the discussion. Picture buyers on the panel included Peter Raffelt of Gruner +Jahr; Matt Burgess of Creature; Martin Casson of Dentsu in the UK; Alexander Karts of Die Bildbeschaffer and Paul Millen from an advertising agency in Istanbul. Two issues of particular interest to image creators and sellers revolved around the use of microstock by these large commercial customers and the lack of outstanding unique images in stock collections.
Ingram Image has entered into a binding agreement to acquire the
goodwill and trading assets of Reflex Stock. Reflex offers a unique mix
of visual content, which currently comprises 10 million images.
Reflexstock.com offers traditional Premium quality Royalty Free and
Rights Managed content alongside Budget Royalty Free, MicroPrice Images
and a subscription service. Ingram also acquires Reflex’s successful
industry Design Blog.
After spending six month translating all aspects of its customer experience into German Alamy has launched a German website at
www.alamy.de.
An increasing number of stock photographers are fed up with low prices and low royalty percentages and are looking for a way to get out of the whole agency/distributor rat race. Many are setting up their own sites and are looking for ways deal more directly with their customers. They recognize that they won’t make as many sales, but feel that the higher fees they will receive for each use will generate more total income in the long run. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that by licensing their images directly to end users photographers would receive 10 or more times the revenue for each image licensed compared to what they are receiving from their agencies now.
Have you given Getty Images exclusive rights to represent some of your
images? Are those same images available for licensing on Veer or Corbis
under the brand name Ocean Photography? Many photographers will be
surprised to discover the answer is YES. Photographers who produced images for PhotoDisc and Photographer’s
Choice RF have recently found some of their images on Veer being
marketed through the Ocean Photography brand.
iStockphoto has announced the launch of its premium-quality Vetta video collection with clip prices that range from 55 to 150 credits (credit prices vary from $0.99 to $1.54 depending on the size of the credit package purchased). Currently there are over 300,000 video clips on iStock, but only a few thousand of the best are in the Vetta collection. However, it is expected that the Vetta collection will grow rapidly. Approximately 5,000 videographers have contributed clips to iStock.
Photographers are trying to assess how much the acquisition of PhotoLibrary will add to Getty’s gross revenue and what impact it might have on Getty’s overall control of the stock photo market. I estimate that gross 2010 revenue for still photo licensing worldwide was about $1.45 billion. Over the years I have defined the “stock photo market” as including the licensing of still photos and illustrations, but not footage or any of the auxiliary activities that Getty, Corbis and some other companies are involved in. I also include in my gross figure revenue generated by the picture divisions of AP, Reuters, AFP, etc. and of course the editorial division of Getty Images.
APA (American Photographic Artists) members have “uniformly agreed that Getty Images’ proposed changes are unacceptable.” Through its counsel,
Nelson & McCulloch LLP, APA contacted Getty Images prior to the April 30th deadline and made clear its position on the new contract. The organization requested, “that Getty Images stay or extend its self-imposed deadline for forcing contributors to sign (its) agreements.” Getty Images refused to respond to APA’S inquiry.
It’s no surprise to anyone in the stock photo business that average fees
for image use are declining. The questions are how much, what’s causing
the decline, can we make it up in volume and how can we turn it around?
ASMP’s Executive Director Eugene
Mopsik speaks out on the ASMP position relative to the new Getty Images photographer contract. ASMP has been carrying on a dialogue with
Getty for some years as a photographer advocate. While ASMP has had recent discussions
with Getty, substantive results in the best interests of photographers
have not been achieved. Therefore, ASMP believes that it is important
for photographers to stay knowledgeable about the changes in the market and to
be aware of options including changing distributors and self-marketing.
Stipple, a San Francisco-based technology company, has released a suite
of products that will turn editorial images into e-commerce storefronts
for consumers. The principle behind this new development is that
consumers often want to purchase something that is pictured in an
editorial image. It might be a T-shirt, a dress or the jeans a celebrity
is wearing; or a purse; or shoes; an electronic gadget; or golf clubs –
you get the idea. How does the consumer find the brand name of product
pictured and where to buy it
According to Tech Crunch
Getty Images has acquired competitor
The Photolibrary Group. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed and as of this writing no additional information is available on the Getty web site.
Getty Images has announced that it has acquired PicScout, a leader in
identifying image use, metadata and licensing information on the web.
Founded in 2002 by Offir Gutelzon and Eyal Gura the company is based in
Herzliya, Israel and has 60 employees. The PicScout brand will remain,
and the R&D team is expected to remain in Israel.
Universal Images Group (UIG), and Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB) have
entered into a 10-year License Agreement that makes UIG the exclusive
provider of still pictures, video and footage for EB’s online
educational image service, Image Quest. UIG, the distribution
business of the Virtual Picture Desk (VPD), has provided 2 million
educational still images for Britannica Image Quest and will
subsequently provide motion content including video and footage clips.
The Image Quest online subscription service went live in September 2010
with content from more than 50 world-class image providers.
In early March
Selling-Stock reported that many of iStockphoto’s most experienced videographers were very upset with the proposed royalty share for iStock new Vetta collection. At least 25 of the most productive contributors with a combined total of about 45,000 clips decided not to participate in Vetta. Most concluded they were likely to earn more if their clips were licensed at the lower Exclusive prices because they would continue to receive a higher royalty rate. It is also expected that clips available at the lower Exclusive prices will sell more frequently than those at the higher Vetta prices. Illustrators who produce Vector art were faced with the same problem.
When customers first requested rights to use images in both print and
online it seemed reasonable to charge a supplemental fee for the online
use that was much less than the print price. Today, electronic use is at
least equal to print and tomorrow it will be the predominate use of all
imagery. If we continue to price electronic as a lesser usage we will
be offering a huge discount on the price for the majority of our future
licenses. Therefore we must come up with an entirely new strategy for licensing electronic uses.