When the question of market leaders in the stock photo industry comes up the names photographers usually think about are Getty Images, Shutterstock, AdobeStock, iStock and Alamy. Maybe they should be thinking about the Australian company
Canva. The users and buyers of photographs are people who design products that needs visuals. Canva has been built to provide a host of services designers need to do their jobs.
As I pointed out in
yesterday’s story EyeEm is the single largest supplier of stock images to Getty’s Creative Collection. Currently 8,005,719 of the 30,472,764 images in Getty’s Creative Collection have been supplied by EyeEm. That’s 26% of the total collection making EyeEm by far the largest contributor to Getty Creative.
Due to the unforeseeable circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic the CEPIC Congress 2020 cannot be held from 27 to 29 May. In order to avoid the negative impact this cancellation would cause registered delegates, CEPIC has been able to secure new dates of 30 September to 2 October 2020 at the existing venue, Gran Meliá Victoria in Palma de Mallorca. There will be a Welcome Reception on 29 September.
This week, the U.S. Copyright Office announced some changes in its special handling requirements and some additional information about the impact of the coronavirus on the copyright registration system. You can find the complete announcement
here.
In the last four years there has been dramatic shifts within the Getty Images Creative Collection. It is unclear how this has affected gross revenue generated as Getty has stopped providing a public breakdown of the revenue segments of its business. Nevertheless, it is believed that since 2016 annual gross Creative revenue has consistently generated about $280 million of the company's roughly $850 million in gross revenue.
Since June 2018, CEPIC has been actively collaborating closely with Google, and later with IPTC, and DMLA to find a way to make Google Image Search users aware that certain image found need to be licensed. On Wednesday February 26th at 3pm EST there will be an online Zoom meeting on Google Images Licensable Badge – Nuts & Bolts with Doug Dawirs, Senior Technical Adviser of the DMLA and hosted along with industry experts to explain, and gather input, on the upcoming UI,
Schema.org and IPTC changes. To register in advance for this meeting go here:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/vpMucu-trDIu6pKIFcgRfuu5EPnVgsQlHQ
Shutterstock has reported Q4 2019 revenue of
$166.4 million up 3% compared to Q4 2018 and up from $157.42 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download averaged
$3.44 per image, up from $3.40 in Q4 2018. Total image and video downloads for Q4 were up to
47.7 million compared to 46.8 million a year earlier. At the end of the year Shutterstock had over 314 million images and 17 million video clips, for a total of
331 million pieces of content in its collection.
Alamy has been acquired by
PA Media Group a UK-based news and information business. Founded 20 years ago, Alamy has one of the world’s most diverse creative and editorial stock imagery collections, comprising almost 200 million photographs, vectors and 360-degree panoramic images sourced from a network of over 100,000 photographers and 650 picture agencies and archives. . The business has close to 100,000 customers in more than 150 countries, working across a range of sectors including publishing, design, advertising and broadcast.
Alamy may be the fifth largest company in the in the stock photo industry (after Getty Images, Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, and iStock) and has been doing reasonably well in a very sick industry. Alamy’s latest reported sales figures are for 2018 and can be found on the
Companies House website. on October 17, 2019. This report was recorded on October 17, 2019 and shows that Alamy had gross annual sales of £22.7 million ($29,305,500 ).
CORRECTION - Please re-read yesterday's story on
Future Demand For Photography. I made a serious math error in the original story. The situation for photographers is much worse than earlier reported.
Unsplash’s statistics page currently reports
70,263,886 downloads per month. The
combined monthly downloads of Shutterstock, Getty and Alamy only total about
16,433,333 downloads, or about 24% of Unsplash's monthly totals.
A reader asked recently, “Is it true that Unsplash is now getting more downloads than Getty, Shutterstock and Alamy combined?” According to
Unsplash’s statistics page they currently have
70,263,886 downloads per month. Based on Shutterstock’s last
quarterly report they have about 15,433,333 downloads monthly. Their downloads per quarter haven’t changed much quarter-to-quarter over the last two years so I think this number is a pretty good average and not really growing.
A key tool for professional photographers for more than 50 years will no longer be available to future photographers as DynaLite Inc. files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy (all assets will be sold off to pay creditors).
Freepik Company, a platform of free and exclusive graphic content, has signed Rod Oliveira to a newly created position of Chief Marketing Officer in a move to strengthen an area of great strategic relevance for the brand.
It won’t be long until commercial image users, and possibly news outlets, will no longer need photos taken by human photographers. This will particularly be true for photos of people. Every image will be digitally created from existing photos and nothing will have any relevance to reality.
Photo District New, the preeminent publication for professional photographers in the U.S. has folded. See the sad story of its demise in
ProPhotoDaily. Individuals thinking of, or trying to establish, a career as a photographer should carefully consider whether this line of work has any long term future if the business is not healthy enough to support an industry publication for professionals. This certainly is another nail-in-the-coffin of the idea of photography as a career.
I just read a story on
Passive Income. The writer suggests that
stock photography is one way to earn passive income and says it “is income you earn from things you would normally do in your spare time, or when you’re not working at a salaried job.”
Active Income, on the other hand is the salary you get from the work you do by investing time and effort directly in return for money; if you don’t work, you don’t earn. Whether you are a teacher, a builder, a banker, a software developer, an athlete, an actor, or a doctor, you have to work to earn a living.” The time you spend working is tied to the income you receive.
In 2019 among the most successful creative industry events in New York were
footageMarketplace and
imageMarketplace. This year these two events have been combined and renamed
creativeMarketplace New York 2020. The event will be returning on April 1, 2020 to the Midtown Loft at 267 Fifth Avenue (29th St & 5th Av.) in New York City and will be open from 9:30am to 7:00pm.
Shutterstock says it is excited to announce a new
annual music subscription for only
$199 per-year or $16.60 per-month. This subscription gives the user the freedom to download as many tracks as needed, whenever they need them, for one low yearly price. Those interested may visit the
pricing page to start their subscription.
The
2020 CEPIC Congress, the largest networking hub for agencies worldwide will take place at the Gran Melia Victoria in Palma de Mallorca from 27 to 29 May 2020 with a welcome reception on May 26th. Registration is now open. For fees and other registration details check out
this link.
The
“Lean In” concept in business generally suggests the idea of moving forward on an idealized path. Chest out. Chin up. Figuring it out along the way. Watch out, world — here I come.
“Step Back” is more about taking the time to assess the overall business landscape and consider long term risks and potential, and the likelihood of achieving long term goals. After carefully assessing one makes a decision as to whether to aggressively Lean In on the path they have been headed, or make radical adjustment in direction for their long term good. It is time for everyone in the stock photography business to
“Step Back.”
Shutterstock has launched its ninth annual
Creative Trends Report, identifying global and local trends that will influence design aesthetics and visual culture in 2020.
A New York State appeals court overturned a lower court’s ruling and held that an insurer must defend McGraw-Hill Education Inc. in underlying copyright litigation in the case of McGraw-Hill Educ., Inc. v. Ill. Nat’l Ins. Co.
The leading trade association for moving-image licensors, 17-year-old
ACSIL (Association of Commercial Stock Image Licensors) has joined forces with the Digital Media Licensing Association (
DMLA) as of January 1, 2020. The DMLA, which began 70 years ago as a picture agency association, now represents all media licensors, and by adding ACSIL, a long-standing and respected moving-image association, will significantly increase membership and reach.
A reader wrote, “Over the years you’ve published Shutterstock’s gross revenue number. It would be good to see the ratio of corporate earnings to photographer earnings after this weeks
1 billion horn blow.”
It is getting harder and harder for image creators to get higher royalties on their images in
iStock’s Signature collection. Royalties go up based on the total number of times images belonging to a particular creator are downloaded during the year. Download targets for Exclusive contributors have been around since 2017. At the beginning of the year the contributor starts with the ending royalty rate of the previous year. On January 1st iStock starts counting downloads for the year. Essential image downloads are counted as one while Signature Plus downloads are counted as 2. Some, but not all, downloads of Signature images through Gettyimages.com also count as 2. Others, probably mostly Premium Access sales, only count as 1.