Stock
Getty Images has made the OJO Images available on
iStockphoto. The images are now “exclusively” available on the Getty Images network of sites and select partners. The full collection boasts nearly 31,000 premium files, which will grow to nearly 45,000 by the end of October.
Swedish mobile photography startup
Foap has secured $1.5 million in funding that will go towards further growing the company. The company will be taking its first steps into the American market by opening an office in New York in September.
Many expect users of mobile phones with decent cameras with constant connectivity to the world to be the next disruptors of the stock photography business.
Crowd sources photojournalism is expected to cut into the business of the long-suffering professional news photographers. Here are some thoughts as to why crowd-sourced mobile photography may not be the boom angel investors are hoping for.
Shutterstock has reported a record 24.3 million downloads and $56.8 million in revenue in Q2 2013. Revenue per download grew 5% year-over-year to $2.33. This was driven by a continued shift toward on demand, direct sales and footage downloads, all of which carry a higher effective price-per-download. The Shutterstock collection has grown to more than 28 million images and over 1 million video clips.
Recently, in testimony on the importance of copyright before the House Intellectual Property Subcommittee John Lapham, Senior Vice President, General Counsel of Getty Images, provided some
useful statistics about Getty’s operation.
Stipple, the leader in image-based advertising and e-commerce, (
see previous story) has partnered with
Getty Images to help advertisers better reach their image audiences and to help publishers monetize photos more efficiently.
The
Image Source team responsible for tracking trends in the premium stock photography industry is in the process of publishing a series of briefings following their recent research conducted to determine near-future patterns in the use of conceptual imagery. Intended to help premium stock photographers produce the imagery demanded by image buyers, their research will be published as a series of articles on the Image Source
photographer resource blog over the next couple of months.
How fast is the education market moving from print to digital delivery? In its Q2 2013 earnings conference call with investors last week, Pearson, PLC, the world leading provider of educational materials and services provided some interesting data.
Yuri Arcurs has written a
long post entitled “
Microstock sees its first major setback in 6 years and here’s why.” In it he explains (1) why he is pulling his images out of all microstock agencies except iStockphoto and his own Peopleimages.com, (2) why he decided to go exclusive with Getty, (3) why mobile, crowd sourced photography is “a serious threat to stock photography” and (4) why he has invested $1.4 million in Scoopshot. This article is a must read for everyone in the industry.
A few months ago I reported how Getty Images’
Rights Managed prices vary when an image is being used in different countries. Now, I've expanded that research to cover a number of additional countries and additional types of uses. The results are interesting and show how confusing RM pricing can be.
Earlier this month Cengage Learning Inc., the second biggest publisher of college-course material in the U.S., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it tries to restructure its debt of about $5.8 billion. Under a deal with some of its senior lenders, the company will try to use the bankruptcy case to eliminate $4 billion in debt,
We are moving rapidly toward a time when a large portion of the news photographs we see will be crowd sourced. There may be no way to slow this trend, but it raises some serious questions for those trying to earn a living as news photographers, or those who hope to take up this career in the future.
Alfonso Gutiérrez, President of CEPIC has provided some updated information on the CEPIC Image Registery (CIR) that Selling Stock reported on earlier
here and
here. See his report.
In the last 18 months I have been tracking the collection sizes of 421 of
iStock’s leading contributors. These creators have had combined total downloads of 49,141,000 out of an estimated 150 million for iStock since its founding. Thus, they are very representative of iStock’s total collection and sales.
iStockphoto has announced today that
1/2 of its imagery is now 1/2 of its former price. Prices for non-exclusive images used to be: 1, 4, 7, 10, 12, 15, 18 credits based on file size. Now those prices have dropped to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 credits with the price for the largest file size being only 39% of what was formerly charged.
Over the weekend, Seeking Alpha (SA) published an article aimed at the investment community entitled, “
Shutterstock Valuation Makes Me Shudder.” The points made in this article are well worth considering, not only for investors, but for anyone interested in earning a living in the business of stock photography.
Since early in 2009 I have been
tracking downloads of 192 of iStockphoto’s most productive contributors. All of them have more than 48,000 downloads and 130 of them have more than 100,000. There are others with high numbers of downloads that I have not tracked for as long a period, and I’m sure there are a few I have not identified. Nevertheless, I believe this group is very representative.
The UK’s
Copyright Hub has launched its pilot phase. It is designed to be a gateway to information about copyright in the UK and point those interested in the right direction to get permission to use a copyrighted work.
PACA has changed its name to
PACA, The Digital Media Licensing Association. While the name Picture Archive Council of America has served the organization well, it has become apparent that it no longer accurately reflects today’s photography licensing business, or the membership of the organization.
Alamy has launched an initiative called “Ask James” where contributors pose questions on Facebook, Flickr or the Alamy blog about Alamy operations or the stock photo business in general. Once the questions are in CEO James West sits down infront of a webcam and records as many answers as he has time for in 10 minutes segments.
The stock photography business has its first billionaire. Bloomberg news reported that last week Jonathan Oringer, the founder of
Shutterstock Inc. (SSTK) became a billionaire. Oringer owns 18.5 million shares of Shutterstock, or 55 percent of the outstanding shares. Last week shares of the company reached a record high of $56.44. Today, shares are trading at around $56 per share which makes Oringer’s holding worth in excess of one billion dollars.
Internet entrepreneur and prolific angel investor Fabrice Grinda recently commented on his
blog that stock photography may be the “best business ever” – for the organization marketing the work online, not the producer.
As a result of technological advancements, and the new image search techniques on the horizon, we are about to enter another paradigm shift in the way stock images are licensed. Delaying or ignoring this new trend in image marketing is not a viable option. It will move forward whether individual creators like it or not. The only option is to figure out how to adapt to this new reality in a way that will allow creators to continue to earn a living.
Last month we reported on the storm over the
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act (ERRA) that was passed by the U.K. Parliament. Photographers were up in arms, but it turns out that many of the initial concerns may have been misplaced.
Yesterday we talked about the search by image feature on the
CIR. Today, we discovered that Getty has added a search by image feature to
Thinkstock. Go to the Thinkstock web site and look for the “search by image” button under the search box.