Macrostock
For some years we’ve seen a decline in rights managed and traditional royalty free prices. If you look at the price calculators of major distributors it might appear that prices haven’t declined all that much. The problem is that nobody pays those prices.
SuperStock has announced that Alan Bailey will assume the role of CEO and departing CEO, Lanny Ziering will take over the position of Chairman of RGB Ventures, the parent company of SuperStock. Mr. Ziering will focus on acquisitions, strategic alliances, and emerging technologies as the company focuses on expansion.
In the future, will it be possible for more photographers to earn a
better living than they are currently earning producing stock images? More and
more photographers are jumping into the stock photo business every day
and many hope to make it a career. Here’s
a dozen reasons why future
revenue growth for this industry seems unlikely. I’ve discussed all
these issues before, but it seems useful to briefly itemize them all in
one place.
On the
MicrostockGroup blog there has been a debate as to whether it is better to try to license images through
Alamy rather than on microstock sites given that the license fees and royalty percentages are so much higher.
The summer heat in Washington has got me thinking about air conditioning. That brought to mind a story I did back in 2006 about air conditioning photos and microstock. It all started when a customer asked for a stock picture of an
air conditioning repairman working on a home system to use in a small yellow pages ad.
In late March In the case of Tom Bean vs. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona Judge Frederick J. Martone
GRANTED partial summary judgment to the plaintiff on the issue of defendant's liability for copyright infringement of 26 images used in seven titles.
Thousands of images from the National Geographic Stock: Vintage Collection are now available at
The Granger Collection. The rare historical catalogue, part of the National Geographic Image Collection, documents the world and its inhabitants, including indigenous people, their cultures, the environment, and the natural world from the 1880s through the 1970s.
Jacksonville, FL based
SuperStock has acquired Seattle based
Science Faction Images. The 40,000 tightly edited high-end science and high technology images in the Science Faction collection will allow SuperStock to “better serve our clients in publishing and advertising,” according to Lanny Ziering, CEO of SuperStock.
T3Media, Inc. (formerly Thought Equity Motion), a leading provider of cloud-based video management and licensing services, has announced the launch of a new licensing offering—
Paya ™ (Pay-ya), the world's index of licensable content™. To watch a short video that explains how Paya works, click
here.
Universal Images Group (UIG), owned by industry veteran George Sinclair (also the founder of the Virtual Picture Desk in 2002 and co-author of Britannica’s Image Quest), has acquired the business rights and digital library of the
MyLoupe and the
Ad Stock Images picture agencies.
Stock photographers regularly complain about the “Race To The Bottom” in
terms of pricing and they look for someone to blame. Favorite whipping
boys are Getty Images, Alamy and microstock. But, these distributors are
not really the problem. The problem is technology.
Stephen Walker recently read a report about
Shutterstock’s IPO plans on APhotoEditor. He then posted the on following conclusions on the ASMPstock group on yahoo. "Traditional RM, RF are growing at a pretty good clip? Micro more so!" He also said, "I see these numbers as a strong indicator of growth and positive for stock shooters." I think he is entirely wrong. Read why.
Searching for a buyer for Getty Images or deciding whether to launch an
IPO may be the least of CEO Jonathan Klein’s worries these days. He’s
got to be looking at Shutterstock and Fotolia and anticipating that they
will use a good part of their new found wealth to build their premium
collections. When that happens, will these brands cut further into the
Getty Images franchise?
It no longer makes sense to keep microstock and traditional stock separate. It’s time to look at integration. Read this article to understand why and what the industry needs to do to go about accomplishing such an integration.
Hellman & Friedman, the owners of Getty Images Inc, have retained Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co to examine a possible sale or public offering of the business. According to press reports a sale or IPO could value Getty Images at $4 billion. This move follows announcements last week by
Shutterstock and
Fotolia. Shutterstock hopes to raise $115 million in its IPO and Fotolia received a $150 million growth investment from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. for a 50% stake in the company
Will the stock photo market generate $5 billion annually in revenue by the end of 2012?
Don't You Believe It.In its recent S-1 filing Shutterstock quoted BBC Research as saying the "market for pre-shot commercial digital imagery is expected to exceed $5 billion in 2013." I think the market for stock still photos, illustration and footage will generate no more than $2 billion by the end of 2012.
StockFood, the leading food media agency, is adding a new product to its extensive visual collection: instructional Recipe Videos, offered with a package of additional complementary information services. The Recipe Video collection is targeted at the food, retail and hospitality industries, as well as a broad user group of online media.
In web advertising what produces the best results still photos or videos? You may be surprised. This story outlines some of the things that are happening that will change the way customers choose their images and some of the things you can do to increase sales.
In March it was reported by Moody’s and Standard & Poors that the
gross revenue for Getty Images in calendar 2011 was $945 million. This
figure, and how the various lines of business break out, provide some interesting insights into the state of the stock
photography business.
The stock photography industry has to face the challenge of becoming relevant in an economy that has no patience for inadequate business models. Today the vast majority of photographs are used without any contact with the traditional photo industry, which has completely lost control of production and distribution. But the industry continues stubbornly to apply old rules to this new landscape. It does not see, or purposely wants to ignore, that their model does not fit current needs and thus is chasing customers away.
Evolveimages.com has introduced a new simplified licensing model for Rights Managed (RM) Images that they call EvoRights. EvoRights focuses on four primary price drivers: use type (commercial or editorial), intended media (print, digital or both), duration and geographic distribution and allows customers to determine the usage fee in as little as three clicks.
An Australian company called
ImageBrief, has developed a way for buyers to submit briefs directly to photographers for the images they need. This cuts out the stock agency middle men, and eliminates the need for buyers to wade through massive online databases of images.
The U.S. Copyright Office is proposing to increase the registration fee for filing an online application from $35 to $65, and the fee for using a paper application from $65 to $100. They are requesting a fee increase because in 2011 fee receipts only covered 59.5% of the cost of providing the service. The rest comes out of the taxpayers pockets.
Alamy has announced the expansion of its
100% Royalties project, designed to give young photographers experience of a professional stock photography agency. Launched in a number of universities in the UK and USA in 2011 the project has proved a real success. In fact, it has been such a success that it is being extended into a second year.
RM photographers Take Note!! With the launch of
PeopleImages.com Yuri Arcurs has taken away your last best argument for why professional art directors and graphic designers should go to traditional RM sites to license the images they need.