Did you know Amazon invented the process for photographing people against white backgrounds? The U.S. Patent and Trademark office recently awarded them a patent for this invention. If you’re trying to sell photos shot against a white background Amazon may want a piece of anything you earn!
Recently a subscriber asked, “how much newly produced professional content is licensed each year compared to content that is licensed more than a year after it was first made available for purchase?” Great question! As far as I know no agency collects such data, but it could be of tremendous value in helping agencies better understand what their customer's needs and in directing photographers as to what to shoot.
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.
Time Warner will spin-off Time Inc. on May 23, 2014. Shareholders of record at 5:00 p.m. on that date will receive one share of Time Inc. common stock for every eight shares of Time Warner common stock. For more details about the new company check out the SEC's
Preliminary Information Statement of Time, Inc.
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.
In 2013 there were 145,713 ad pages in the magazines measured by the trade organization
Publishers Information Bureau. It is worth noting that in 2000 this organization reported 286,932 ad pages – almost double the 2013 numbers -- for the magazines it tracks.
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:
During Time Warner’s Q1 2014 earnings call Howard Averill, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Time Warner said advertising revenue was down 7% and subscriptions were flat.
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.
According to Variety Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation recently told attendees at the Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills that “Movies are not a growth business.” Within 17 days after a movie is released in theaters it will be available on TV and smartphones at much lower prices. This is bad news for theater owners.