German stock-image producer Westend61 is removing over one-third of its collection from circulation. The 4-year-old company is also raising its print-resolution pricing by an average of 25%.
Traditional stock photography sellers constantly struggle to improve their collections and search. Diverse collections are added to the offering to increase customer choice. Then portals revert to tighter editing, limiting the number of images returned on each search. When portals use this strategy, the rejected images often turn up on other portals and customers often buy the rejected images.
Leading footage-licensing company Thought Equity Motion has launched a music and sound-effects collection. Offering exclusive and third-party audio content, the royalty-free music library brings Thought Equity even closer to the business models of the stock industry's Big Three.
Lucky Oliver, the favorite underdog of many microstock contributors, will cease operations on May 15. After the company spent a year seeking funds to take the business to the next level, company founder Bryan Zmijewski said: "The investment team decided that it was in the best interest of all stakeholders to shut the company down."
According to first-quarter data from the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB), U.S. consumer magazines are exhibiting classic signs of recession. Advertising revenues and pages are on a decline, given the market's economic woes. In contrast, ads of food products and other necessities is growing in both dollars and share of revenue.
Many traditional stock sellers are trying to determine how to enter the microstock market. Microstock companies have identified hundreds of thousands of customers. Traditional sellers have resisted this market, due to the low fees per use. But the number of sales is becoming hard to ignore.