In late September 2018,
Google announced that it had been working with two photo industry consortiums, CEPIC and IPTC, to integrate some image ownership-related metadata into search results. Now Google images desktop view has a new “Image credits” link below the image. This information is collected from IPTC Creator, Credit and/or Copyright information if it exists.
Adobe has given photographers notice that on November 5, 2019, almost a year way, the
Fotolia website will close and all customers will need to use Adobe Stock from that time on to find the images they need.
We have closed the
Editorial Photographer Income Survey that was sent out at the end of August. There were 270 responses which is somewhat disappointing considering the tens of thousands of photographers producing stock images today.
In their reports to investors
Shutterstock has always emphasized their steadily growing
Revenue Per Download as well as their growth in the number of images offered to customers. But there is another figure that is extremely important to image creators. That is the
Revenue Per Image In The Collection (RPIIC). That has been steadily declining since Q2 2014.
Alamy.com and 360Cities.net have announced that the 360Cities’ collection of thousands of stunning, immersive 360° spherical images will now be available to Alamy customers through Alamy’s online worldwide marketplace. The 360Cities database will launch on Alamy.com on 5 November 2018 with an initial collection of approximately 150K images, to be supplemented with a regular stream of new content.
For the last four years the Australian Government has published an annual "Consumer Survey on online copyright infringement". The
103 page report focuses on the unlicensed use of Music, Video Games, Movies, TV, e-Books and PC software. Unfortunately, it does not deal the unlicensed use of photographs.
Storyblocks has analyzed a total of 60 million searches on
its site in 2018 to find the
50 most popular landmarks featured in creative works.
I’m regularly asked for my thoughts on the size of the worldwide market for stock photography in terms of gross revenue and the potential for market growth. I currently estimate the worldwide sale of stock imagery to be about $2.75 billion divided among four different product types - Microstock, Creative Stills, Editorial and Footage or Video. Further details of the breakdown are provided in this story.
There is very little likelihood that the overall market will grow if the stock photo business continues on its current course. In order to have growth at least four major strategy changes are needed. I see no likelihood that any of these will occur.
The European stock photography and video agency PantherMedia, based in Munich, has announced the introduction of a new 10 photo downloads subscription. All PantherMedia’s subscriptions now include access for up to 3 team members.