Shutterstock has announced the buyout of AI-driven music platform
Amper Music for an undisclosed sum. The move adds to a growing trend of stock image sites getting involved in rights-free music. Earlier this year, Adobe
inked a deal to carry rights-free music catalogs from both Epidemic Sound and Jamendo, while Getty Images also hosts a royalty-free music library by
Epidemic Sound.
Those setting prices for photography are focused entirely on profits for agency managers and
compensation for capital investment. They give very little
consideration to the well being of creators. Compensation for stock
photos is widely out of balance with production costs. Changes are
needed. Photographer need more control over how their work is priced and a larger share of the fees customers pay. With new technology such changes are becoming increasingly
possible.
We are living in a time when Artificial Intelligence is dramatically changing the way visual content is created. It may not be long before stock photographers are no longer needed to produce photos for commercial use. Photographers will still create photos for personal use and their own entertainment, but visual content for commercial purposes will be created by graphic artists using AI to tell the story and produce the effects their customer needs.
This story first appeared in German on
Robert Kneschke's website. Why photographers give away their pictures on platforms such as Pixabay remains mostly incomprehensible to me even after this article. Sometimes, however, the authors do not even know that someone else is illegally offering their images for free.
Adobe Stock has released
Adobe Stock Creative Insights, a data report revealing information collected from Adobe Analytics on 149+ million U.S. visits and millions of asset uploads to Adobe Stock between January 2019 and September 2020. As recently revealed in
Adobe’s State of Creativity survey, 91% of creatives admit that COVID-19 and nationwide protests have inspired them to incorporate real-world issues into their work, with 87% reevaluating the subject matter of stock imagery in campaigns.
Shutterstock has reported Q3 2020 revenue of
$165.2 million up 4% compared to $159.1 million in Q2 2019 and down from $159.2 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download was
$3.79 per-image compared to $3.40 in Q3 2019 and $3.61 the previous quarter. Total image and video downloads for Q3 were 43.4 million compared to
46.3 million a year earlier and down from 44 million from the previous quarter. At the end of the quarter Shutterstock had over
350 million images and
20 million video clips in its collection, for a total of 370 million pieces of content.
Hopefully this story about my photo career will help young photographers understand how difficult it will be to make long-range plans for their future. Many businesses are changing at an increasingly rapid and unpredictable pace. Whatever you think you want to do in your 20s may turn out to be impractical, or unfeasible, sooner than you expect. What seem like an exciting opportunity today may soon disappear.
Adobe has announced that they are putting together a $500,000
Artist Development Fund to commission artists from “underrepresented communities” to create diverse assets for AdobeStock’s portfolio. It is still unclear as to exactly the type of images they will be asking photographers to shoot. Also unknown is whether the contracts will only go to photographers from “underrepresented communities” to do the shooting, or whether they may go to any photographer who is willing to shoot “underrepresented community” subjects.
The first Digital Media Licensing Association (DMLA) virtual conference starts Sunday. Online sessions for the week-long conference will begin most days at 11:00am EDT and end by 5:00pm EDT. All sessions will be available online and you can attend from the comfort of your home. No need to travel.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced the addition of Editorial Video, a new premium, full-service editorial video offering that is now available for license. Critical Past, Celebrity Footage and Viral Hog are just a few of the new partners who will distribute their engaging video content worldwide through Shutterstock’s Editorial Video. In addition, current partners’ epa and London Entertainment will begin providing high-quality video via the new service.