Articles by Jim Pickerell
After years of Shutterstock taking market share from Getty, it seems that the two have achieved a state of relative parity with regard to gross revenue generated from the licensing of still images. Customers no longer seem to be leaving Getty because its prices are too high. In fact, Getty seems to be charging selected customers less per-image than what Shutterstock would charge them. Where AdobeStock fits in is unclear, but for the time being each seems to have a customer base that favors them. There does not seem to be a lot of movement of customers from one to the other.
The General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, that goes into effect on Friday, May 25, 2018 will require companies that do business in the EU to provide a form to the companies that they are dealing with. It is not clear if it is necessary to supply such a form to each and every individual that a company deals with. A survey by
CompliancePoint shows that 76% of U.S. businesses are not prepared for the enforcement deadline. (Check out
previous story.)
Arcangel Images has sent the following message to the photographers it represents. “Again, we ask all photographers not to split rights-managed photoshoots between libraries or submit to other outlets near identical RM images to those held by Arcangel. Aside from devaluing your work, this can and will lead to major licensing conflicts. This not only affects our reputation as a supplier of high-end imagery, one which has taken almost twenty years to build but can be costly for the photographer, as they may be liable to pay legal and re-printing costs.”
London based,
Technavio has published its 2018 report on the global still images market. The report estimates that the market will grow at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of approximately 8% during the period 2018-2022.
The report is available at a
discounted price of $2,500 and is said to “provide an analysis of the most important trends expected to impact the market outlook. In addition, it offers an up-to-date analysis of the market concerning the current market scenario, latest drivers, and the overall global environment.”
Bridgeman has announced the acquisition of
Lebrecht Photo Library, the world’s largest image bank for music and related arts, with a collection of over 400,000 specialist images. Lebrecht is the world's most comprehensive image bank for every kind of music ever created - classical music, jazz, opera, rock music, musical instruments, notation, Broadway musicals, dance and ballet. It also has an extensive archive for literature and historical personalities.
What kind of images are generating the most revenue? Is it the amateur produce imagery that is quickly loading up most of the databases, or the more costly to produce model released people, lifestyle, and business imagery requiring complex and costly set ups and arrangement?
North American photographers and stock agencies may have heard about the new European Union GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) law that goes into effect on May 25, 2018, but figured “that’s something happening in the EU that I don’t have to worry about.”
Well, maybe not!
Shutterstock is enlisting the help of IBM’s Watson AI technology to make it easier for marketers to find images, videos, and music tracks. The company announced today that its library of more than 200 million assets will become available in July through the Watson Content Hub, a cloud-based management system designed to aid in the creation of websites, apps, billboards, and more.
When one analyzes the market for images, it is easy to see that the stock photography business seems to be classified into three image groups that clients can browse and license. Press and news images, creative photographs and a mountain of other visual content that goes from cheap to very cheap, defined as Microstock, although if we want to go lower on pricing, we can also find masses of free pictures from unknown, if not desperate authors, produced to generate internet traffic.
In 1968
Andy Sacks, a 20-year-old University of Michigan photographer covered Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign stop in Detroit for the student newspaper, The Michigan Daily. This is a story about how the photos he captured that day ended up getting used hundreds of times 40 to 50 year later and he received no credit or a reasonable share of compensation for their use.