Getty Images has made a number of strategic decisions in the past few years that have resulted in declines in both its “Creative” (RM and RF) and microstock lines of business. These decisions have also aided Shutterstock in its rise to a commanding position in the market with its subscription licensing model. I want to emphasize that when I talk about declines I am not referring to Getty’s other lines of business - Editorial, Footage, Other or B2B music – which as far as I can tell are still growing.
Getty Images has watched the rise of Shutterstock – to the company’s chagrin – and is trying to build Thinkstock to a position where it can take market share away from Shutterstock. Read this story to see why I think Getty is unlikely to be successful and why their fortunes are likely to further decline.
Photographers who are licensing their images based on usage (RM) need to give some careful thought to the lag time between creation and when they are likely to see any money. This is particularly true if they are licensing their images through an agency as the lag time seems to be getting longer and longer.
ASMP has published “
The Instagram Papers,” a very valuable analysis of Instagram Terms of Service. Every photographer who is considering posting images on Instagram, wants to retain control of his/her images and hopefully earn some money from them should be familiar with the information in this report.
Looking for inspiration? Check out
Blend Images The Blog! at blog.blendimages.com for amazing photos, illustration, graphics and fine art. For a little over a year now the stock photo production company has been regularly showing small collections of the work of amazing visual artists. The works are not limited to photography, but include, illustration, painting, collage, architecture, music, video and more.
Getty Images has made the OJO Images available on
iStockphoto. The images are now “exclusively” available on the Getty Images network of sites and select partners. The full collection boasts nearly 31,000 premium files, which will grow to nearly 45,000 by the end of October.
Swedish mobile photography startup
Foap has secured $1.5 million in funding that will go towards further growing the company. The company will be taking its first steps into the American market by opening an office in New York in September.
Many expect users of mobile phones with decent cameras with constant connectivity to the world to be the next disruptors of the stock photography business.
Crowd sources photojournalism is expected to cut into the business of the long-suffering professional news photographers. Here are some thoughts as to why crowd-sourced mobile photography may not be the boom angel investors are hoping for.
Shutterstock has reported a record 24.3 million downloads and $56.8 million in revenue in Q2 2013. Revenue per download grew 5% year-over-year to $2.33. This was driven by a continued shift toward on demand, direct sales and footage downloads, all of which carry a higher effective price-per-download. The Shutterstock collection has grown to more than 28 million images and over 1 million video clips.
Has someone grabbed one of your images and posted it on Facebook without your permission? On the Stockphoto blog
Stacy Walsh~Rosenstock recently outlined a simple procedure for getting your image off the offending page.