If there is going to be a business of producing and licensing rights to stock photos five or ten years from now, the industry needs a serious re-design. There are at least five areas that need serious modification if the industry is to include anything other than User Generated Content (UGC), or if there is to be revenue growth.
The “Best In Show Festival 2016” of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs will open at 12:00 noon Saturday, May 14, at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre in West Palm Beach, FL.
The annual
FOCAL International Awards Ceremony will be held on May 26, 2016 and the day before on May 25th the
footageMarketplace will be held at 195 Piccadilly (home of BAFTA) in London. At this event footage and music content buyers can meet with 35 of the world’s premier footage/production music libraries.
Aurora Photos has announced that
Tim Davis has joined the growing Aurora sales team as an Account Executive. Tim had spent the last 15 years with Corbis, most recently as a Sales Associate and Account Executive.
PantherMedia is happy to announce that the royalty free images of the renowned Parisian Agency
PhotoAlto are now available via PantherMedia. This addition gives extra flair to PantherMedia’s Premium Collection. PhotoAlto's images distinguish themselves with a special touch of fashion and style that can only originate from Paris. Creatives all around the world hold PhotoAlto in high regard due to its strong technical quality paired with a specific, individual take on subjects and themes of any type. While the main focus of the collection is on people photography, there is also a strong emphasis on food, travel and other subjects.
Dreamstime has enhanced the already prolific stock media catalog of 43 million images and is now accepting submissions to build a library of royalty-free audio clips. In the first 24 hours after opening the site for submissions Dreamstime received more than 10,000 sound clips. The new audio section will eventually contain thousands of high quality professionally produced sound effects and music files, not currently found anywhere else in the industry. The royalty-free audio clips are grouped into four categories which include instrumental, style, theme, and sound effects, with many sub-categories available for further refining, ensuring users can quickly find the exact sounds or music their projects require.
Everyone says there is increasing demand for photos. And there certainly is for photos that can be had for $1.00 or FREE. But is there increasing demand from those customers who used to buy photos for use in advertising and major marketing campaigns? The following are some statistics. Unfortunately, this story may raise more questions than provide answers, but the questions are worth considering.
The major sources of stock and archival footage will exhibit at the
ACSIL FOOTAGE EXPO 2016 which is being held at the historic Prince George Ballroom at 15 East 27th Street, New York City on June 9, 2016.
Shutterstock has reported Q1 2016 revenue of $116.7 million up $19.1 million compared to Q1 2015. The growth is due mainly to new customers and increased activity by enterprise clients. Royalties paid to contributors during the quarter were about 29% of total revenue, or approximately $33.8 million. Currently, there are over 100,000 contributors meaning that the average contributor earned $338 during the quarter.
Paul Melcher disagrees with much of my pessimism about the future of the stock photo industry. I have the greatest respect for Paul and his opinions. He is founding director of
Melcher Systems and has been working in the stock photo space for more than 20 years. He has a thorough understanding of our industry. He has done much more in depth research of the tech side of the industry than I have, and has much better contacts and networking in that space. For these reasons, it is important for my readers to carefully consider what he has to say.