News Analysis
Microstock sellers insist they are focused on developing an entirely new market -- the SOHO (small office, home office) buyer -- that has been, for the most part, ignored by traditional sellers who charge much more for image use than SOHO buyers can afford. There is no question that the vast majority of microstock customers fit this category.
The potentially cannibalizing effect of microstock on traditional licensing is an issue that comes up often, and the panel discussions at last month's PhotoPlus Expo and the annual conference of the Picture Archive Council of America were no exception.
The current disparity of prices is the greatest in the history of stock licensing. Some images are available for $1 for perpetual use; others command thousands while imposing time, distribution and medium restrictions. Somewhere between the extremes is the new buzzword midstock, a concept that attempts to bring some order to the chaos of image pricing.
Getty Images will use Punchstock.com to launch a new RF brand called Valueline on August 31. Prices for Valueline images will be $19 for a 1mb low res image and $49 for all other RF file sizes from 10mb to 300mb.
In the last 10 years, price and demands have changed in the text and trade book industry. At present, there are pricing requests for circulations of up to 1.5 million, and it is not uncommon to get pricing requests for 500,000 to a million circs. Prices, like circs, have changed, too.
There are many reasons why we are likely to see a further decline in overall industry revenue." Overall industry revenue will go down; however, given the $70 million to $100 million that micropayment is adding to total industry revenue by bringing new buyers into the market, there hasn't been much falloff in dollars yet. It's not because customers are spending significantly less money. The pie is just being divided among a lot more suppliers.
Some in the investment community see a dramatic slowdown in the growth of the imaging market. I disagree. Overall, I think industry revenue is flat. Microstock is growing rapidly, but the revenue generated from these sales is being offset by a loss in traditional revenue.
Gross revenue generated by Getty Images in Q2 2007 was $218 million, up from $204.8 million in the same period in 2006. According to CEO Jonathan Klein, revenues for the "creative stills imagery" side of the business were flat at about $161 million. However, it should be noted that this number includes iStockphoto revenue, not normally considered a part of creative stills. The number of iStock downloads in Q2 2006 was about 2.5 million and downloads rose to 4.25 million in the recent quarter. If iStock revenue was removed from both quarters, creative stills would be down.
There is no good way to estimate how many RF or RM sales are being lost because the customers are buying microstock instead. There are indications that Getty's RF sales in 2006 were declining about 10,000 units a quarter or 40,000 for the year. However, this is hard to confirm because Getty acquired Stockbyte last year and that acquisition should have boosted the total number of RF units sold. If 40,000 units were lost at an average price of $250, that would be $10 million.
Alamy has released their second quarter 2007 figures on contributors, percentage revenue and average pricing which shows no major change from the previous quarter. In the quarter they added 897,277 images to their collection, slightly fewer than in the previous quarter. They now have over 9.15 million images on their site.
This edition includes stories on: Morris to Run Jupitermedia Online Biz; Xcavator.net Adds iStockphoto Images; Thought Equity to Distribute NBC News Footage; age fotostock Expands in Sweden; and Corbis Awards Miami Ad School Student.
There are traditionalist out there who are very upset that microstock exists and wish it would go away. It won't. It's here to stay and one way or another traditionalists need to find a way to live with it. This article tries to take a balanced look at microstock and how it will affect everyone's future.
Wellcome Trust, a U.K.-based charity that spends £500 million per year to fund biomedical research, has launched Wellcome Images. The online library offers access to an unprecedented number of medical images, manuscripts and illustrations exploring the past and present of the art and science of medicine.
Two weeks after the much-publicized launch of the Corbis microstock offering, opinions vary. Some think SnapVillage is a bad deal for photographers and that the existence of micropayment brands will end up restricting photographer access to the premium stock-image market.
This edition includes stories on: Apple Sued Over Image Use and Masterfile Continues Design-Based Strategy, Wins More Awards.
This edition includes stories on: Micro Segment Grows at Macro Pace and Fotolia Announces First API Partnership.
This edition includes stories on: FeaturePics Surpasses 300,000 Images and AP Adds Medical, African-American Imagery.
This edition has stories on: Sierra Stock Offers Photographers 70% Commissions and Fotegrafik, a Singapore based agency is expected to launch by the end of the year with a focus on Asian content.
This edition includes stories on: Corbis Restructures to Focus on Stock and Rights Services; International Fight League to Sell Photos by Getty and Mainstream Data Acquires Newscom.
This edition has the following stories: PPSOP Launches Stock Submission Service; Google Experiments With Photo-led News; Masterfile Enhances Search With User Stats and Yahoo! Image Search Integrates Flickr Photos.
Serban Enache, CEO of Dreamstime, asked two questions. "Aren't the costs lower now for a traditional photographer, just as they are for a micropayment photographer? Why does an image of a corn field need to cost several hundred $$$ when it costs $10 to produce?" This article is my response to those questions.
This edition has stories on: Global Digital Copyright Project Sees Progress; Shutterstock Inventory Grows, Fotolia's Shrinks; Barcroft Launches Video Division and LuckyOliver Announces Partnerships.
"I am bored," admitted Getty Images CEO Jonathan Klein in the beginning of his speech at the William Blair Growth Stock Conference. Having given hundreds of similar addresses to investors, Klein decided to forgo discussing financial information readily available through other sources. Instead, he focused on Getty Images' vision of its future.
Corbis has launched the beta version of SnapVillage, (www.snapvillage.com) its entry into the microstock arena. In the beta stage the site will only be available to U.S. customers and will only accept payments on Visa, Master Card and American Express. The site will remain separate from the main Corbis site in the same way that iStockphoto is marketed separately from Getty Images.
This edition has stories on: Industry Leaders Define Current Visual Trends; iStockphoto Among 100 Most-Visited U.S. Web Sites; and Bloggerazzi Image Infringement Saga Continues.