Every few months I put together a summary of some of our most important
recently published stories. This selection is designed to help investors
who are trying to understand the industry as well as image creators
just beginning to explore the idea of licensing their images. Regular
readers will have seen these stories. Please refer friends interested in
licensing images to this series of articles.
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.
Stephen Walker recently read a report about
Shutterstock’s IPO plans on APhotoEditor. He then posted the on following conclusions on the ASMPstock group on yahoo. "Traditional RM, RF are growing at a pretty good clip? Micro more so!" He also said, "I see these numbers as a strong indicator of growth and positive for stock shooters." I think he is entirely wrong. Read why.
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?
U.S. Judge Denny Chin has issued an opinion denying Google's motion to
dismiss lawsuits by the American Society of Media Photographers and the
Authors Guild. The motion to dismiss had been based primarily on
Google's assertion that trade associations did not have
standing to bring a copyright infringement suit on behalf of members. In
his ruling, the Judge asserted that "given the sweeping and
undiscriminating nature of Google's unauthorized copying, it would be
unjust to require that each affected association member litigate his
claim individually."
Most online databases of stock photos contain hundreds of thousands of
images that are never seen by potential buyers. This can be attributed
to the fact that the sole way of finding images is through the use of
keywords. Learn more about how Visual Search could go a long way to solving this problem and the specific strategy used by
Pixolution.
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.
According to Kantar Media $144 billion was spent on advertising in the U.S. in 2011. Television received the largest portion of this (47%) divided between Broadcast ($38.5 billion) and local and national Cable TV at $30 billion. Digital advertising is growing at a rapid pace. Newspaper and Magazine revenues are declining.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) filed a voluntary petition for
reorganization under Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the
Southern District of New York. The “pre-packaged” comprehensive
financial restructuring plan will eliminate $3.1 billion of the
company’s debt through a debt to equity transaction with its bank and
bond holders.