Shutterstock Custom assignments seem to be working well for some contributors. Below you will answers to my questions from two of of the more successful Custom Assignment contributors, Adrianne Haskins and Jeremy Pawlowski. Haskins is based in Tenessee and Pawlowski in Portland Oregon. To see Pawlowski’s work check out this
link and for Haskins work go to
this site.
One of many reasons for the decline of stock photography as a profession is that it has become almost impossible for photographers to get a clear understanding of the various types of imagery, and the relative degree of demand, that users want and need. Once that was not the case, but now there is a total disconnect between image creators and image users.
An
iStock Exclusive photographer asked, “Given that Getty is ‘racing to the bottom’ and is about to eliminate Rights Managed from its collection, do you think our Exclusive contracts will be next?" I don’t think so. It seems to me that it will still be to
Getty’s advantage to keep the Exclusive segment of iStock.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced that its contributor base has reached $1 billion in earnings paid. The company released its
Contributor Earnings Report, which breaks down the massive achievement shared among its global community of artists, photographers, videographers and musicians. The report showcases an overview of earnings by region, a snapshot of high-growth countries and features a selection of contributors who helped make the achievement possible.
Each year, my team at Adobe Stock spends hundreds of hours pouring over thousands of pages of research reports, global news, search data, fine art, and fashion imagery and more to bring you the coming year’s creative trends. This year, we’re doing something a little bit different. For 2020, we’re excited to reveal not just four Visual Trends, but accompanying Motion Trends and Design Trends, too.
Shutterstock, Inc. has launched its 2020 Color Trends report. By analyzing billions of pixel data from images downloaded, and then mapping each pixel to its closest named hex code, the report reveals which colors had the greatest growth between 2018 and 2019, as well as local favorites from around the world. Shutterstock’s 1.9 million customers include designers, marketers, creatives, and bloggers who are often working months in advance on campaigns and projects. Their download choices help to forecast trends in the year ahead.
According to Reuters, the website of communications watchdog
Roskomnadzor has said that one of
Shutterstock’s domains was blocked in Russia on November 13th by the country's Attorney General because the site contained "insulting state symbols."
Paul Roberts of the Seattle Times has recently interviewed Craig Peters, Getty Images CEO, and published an analysis of the company’s current situation entitled “
Its Crunch Time For Seattle Based Photo Giant Getty Images, And For Photographers” that everyone in the industry may want to read.
A couple weeks ago I wrote about the
Death Of Rights Managed Licensing, but Alamy reports that it is alive and well at Alamy. They say, “There’s been lots of discussion in recent weeks about the future of Rights-Managed licensing. Alamy has no plans to discontinue offering RM images and will continue to offer photographers a choice to license their photos as Rights-Managed or Royalty-Free."
Adobe has announced a plan to
authenticate photos as way way of helping consumers determine if the images they see on the Internet are real or fake. How this will work hasn’t been fully spelled out, but is expected to be rolled out in “coming months” according to Chief Product Officer Scott Belsky (See the video of his presentation
here.
The Paris Council, the City of Paris has just granted
Photononstop Group, for a period of five years, the cultural promotion and commercial exploitation of the digital reproductions of two heritage photographic collections: Roger-Viollet and France-Soir.
Bridgeman Images announces that CEO, Victoria Bridgeman after twenty years with Bridgeman Images and the last eight as CEO has decided to step down at the end of the year and move on to new challenges. Dirk Hendrickx, currently Global Head of Sales and Marketing, has been appointed to succeed her at the start of 2020.
For over a decade image creators have been discouraged by Premium Access pricing. I believe PA was first instituted around 2006 as a way for Getty to get a guaranteed monthly payment from some of its largest Enterprise clients rather than the company be being subject to the erratic monthly image needs of some of these customers where they might purchase a huge number of images one month and little or nothing the next.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced the launch of an unlimited monthly subscription for
Shutterstock Music. The new plan is geared toward digital content creators, including YouTubers, podcast producers, and social media managers, offering a cost-efficient solution to licensing unlimited high-quality tracks at $149 per month.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced that Jarrod Yahes is joining the Company as Chief Financial Officer, effective December 9th, 2019. In this role, Yahes, will lead Shutterstock’s Finance, Investor Relations, and Accounting functions. Jarrod will drive financial strategy and report to Jon Oringer, Shutterstock's Founder and CEO.
“Jarrod’s expertise in financial management and strategic growth, as well as his industry experience will be invaluable to our continued success as our company evolves,” said Oringer. “We are pleased to welcome Jarrod to our leadership team and look forward to his contributions to our business.”
A lot of the images being uploaded to major websites these days have little relevance to what the market needs. I decided to do searches on
Shutterstock for country names to try to get some idea of the number of images from each location relative to what the likely demand is for such images.
The
Everett Collection now represents the Photo Link Collection! A finely edited portfolio focusing on New York City celebrities during the 1970’s to 2000’s. Highlights include behind the scenes shots and life behind the velvet ropes inside Studio 54.
I was asked recently what I thought Shutterstock could do to grow revenue. My answer was not much. I don’t think it will be possible to grow the downloads very much. Shutterstock has focused for several years on growing the number of Enterprise customers. But, I don't think that is likely to work either. The one thing they could do is raise prices on at least some of the images they license. See my thoughts on why this is a good idea that they are not likely to adopt.
With the death of RM licensing on the horizon, photographers need to consider whether there is much, if any, value in owning a copyright. Photography has become a commodity like corn or soybeans. Read this story for what the industry can maintain a value for at least some of the professional images being produced.
Getty’s decision to kill RM may be an
opportunity for all those agencies and individuals who want to: (1) continue to license images for higher prices based on usage and (2) enforce their claims of copyright ownership. The key will be in providing a service that will help users, not just benefit image creators.
If you weren’t at the Adobe MAX 2019 conference in Los Angeles you might want to check out some of the videos of conference presentations. Some of the most exciting events were the 11 Sneaks –demos that showcased early-stage, cutting-edge R&D technology being developed in-house by Adobe employees. Adobe Max Sneaks feature AI photography, animation, and audio tools. These new product features may or may not make their way into the product roadmap, but underscore the innovation and creativity happening daily within Adobe’s four walls.
Getty is shutting down all Rights Managed licensing on
www.gettyimages.com. This may effectively be an end to the entire marketing strategy of pricing stock images based on how they are used. While there are still a number of small and mid-sized agencies that continue to price images based on usage, it seems highly unlikely that they will be able to continue to build their image collections or attract many customers in the future. Every stock photographer and stock agent should read
this explanation of Getty’s plans for “phased retirement of rights-managed creative images.”
Shutterstock has reported Q3 2019 revenue of
$159.1 million up 5% compared to Q3 2018 and down slightly from $161.7 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download averaged
$3.40 per image, which was the same in Q3 2018. Total image and video downloads for Q3 were
46.3 million, up from 43.9 million a year earlier, and down from 46.6 million in Q2 2019. At the end of the quarter Shutterstock had over 297 million images and 16 million video clips, or
313 million pieces of content in its collection.
Depositphotos has launched a new series of
photo collections to battle stock photo cliches. The company’s content curators repurpose stock photos and compile collections on a weekly basis to highlight photos that are not typical stock photography.
It has been announced that the
2020 CEPIC Congress will be held on the Spanish island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean sea on May 27 through 29, 2020.