In 2007 I proposed a pricing strategy that combines the rights managed
theory of pricing based on usage and the simplicity of microstock and
its ability to license rights for very small uses for fees of a few
dollars. The system is described in a 12 page booklet. I call the
strategy Modified Right Ready.
The Metadata Image Library Exploitation Project will conduct an all-day seminar, "Speaking in Tongues," in London on Oct. 3. The seminar will include discussion and workshops on multilingual thesauri that can make image collections widely available internationally.
The rationale for royalty-free licensing used to be to provide the customer with three benefits: a simple, straightforward price that didn't require negotiation, unlimited use of the purchased image and a low cost. As this marketing concept has matured, all of these ideas have been lost.
As image collections have grown, finding the right image quickly has become an increasingly difficult problem for customers. Back when the industry delivered 35mm transparencies, customers could call a picture agency, describe their need in detail and a researcher would delve through hundreds of images to find the few best. These selects were then shipped to the customer for final consideration. Internet search has changed all that.
As part of the process of selling Getty Images Goldman Sachs was
provided detailed information relative to Getty's operations and on
November 28, 2007 they produced a report that projected revenue for
2008 and 2012. The following are those figures. Getty Images was later
sold to Hellman & Friedman. Due to the tremendous pressure microstock is putting on the stock photo market the following chart should be sobering for both traditional RF and RM shooters.
This chart provides a list of the stock agencies Getty has acquired since its founding in 1995.
This chart provides a list of the major sellers of stock photography worldwide. The list is broken up into three separate groups, those with revenue in excess of $20 million, those with revenue between $5 and $20 million and those with revenue between $1 and $5 million.
RF prices vary widely depending on the brand. The following are some of the prices charged for usage by various brands on Getty's site.
Below is a list of the Getty Images revenue for the various segments of their business quarter by quarter from Q3 2002 through Q4 2007. At the beginning of 2008 Getty stopped supplying quarterly breakdowns.
The following is a breakdown of Getty's Footage sales per quarter from Q4 2002 through Q4 2007. At the end of 2007 Getty stopped providing breakdowns of individual segments of their business.