This issue contains the following stories: Epiphany; Imagestate Looks For Buyers; The Future At Corbis; State of the Industry, State of the Art; Stock Licensing Industry - 2006; Search Results Lottery; 2006 Stock Income Survey Results; Getty Acquires Stockbyte, $135 Million; Getty Q1 Revenue $200.9 Million; Jupitermedia 2005 Results; U.S. Congress May Gut Copyright; Klein Switches Position On Subscription; Copyright Small Claims Court; Alamy Posts 2005 Numbers; James West Talks About Alamy and Searching On Google.
a21, Inc. has reported $2,859,000 in revenues for the fourth quarter of 2005 and is $9,563,000 in total revenue for the entire year. The net loss for 2005, excluding $219,000 for a "deemed dividend", was $4.8 million or $0.10 per share.
A confluence of events and factors have come together over a period of time to create a very dangerous environment for stock photographers. I have briefly outlined factors so photographers might easily consider the relationships and implications.
Getty Images reported record revenue for Q1 2006 of $200.9 million compared to $178.1 million for Q1 2005 and $185.8 million for Q4 2005. But, for the second quarter in a row investors punished the stock for not meeting market expectations. In the first day of trading the stock price dropped 13.75 percent to a closing price of $65.66, down 30 percent from its high last November.
Alamy has provided extensive data about their operations and reports that they have more then 5 million images from over 300 agencies and over 5,000 individual photographers. They are adding new images at a rate of over 200,000 per month. In 2005 Alamy added 1,555,439 new RM images and 690,295 new RF images to their site. A complete breakdown is provided in this story.
This issue has stories on: ImageState Looking For Buyer: Office of Fair Trading Clears Getty's Acquisition of Digital Vision and Photonica; Workbookstock and Jupiterimages - Will They or Won't They?; Where's Jupiterimages Headed; and Searching on Google.
Getty Images, Inc. has announced the acquisition of Ireland-based Pixel Images Holdings Limited, the parent company of Stockbyte and Stockdisc for $135 million in cash. Photographers shooting for other Getty brands are concerned.
In testimony at the U.S. House of Representatives, Victor S. Perlman, ASMP General Counsel and Managing Director laid out a plan for a Copyright Small Claims Court that would create an inexpensive legal procedure for collecting small copyright claims involving a few thousand dollars or less.
In the past week I've had two unusual moments of revelation and insight into the stock photo business. One has to do with the cost of producing stock and the other iStockphoto.
This group of releases includes: NewsCom Launches RSS Service; Science Faction Inks Deal With Peter Ginter; UpperCut Images Names Winters Vice President; Ethno Images Partners With Big Cheese Photos; and Clarkson Chooses Digital Railroad to Power NCAA Archives.