To incentivize
Adobe Stock image and video contributors Adobe intends to provide the
Creative Cloud Photography Plan (worth $120/£120), to 20,000 to them for free in 2019. You must already be an Adobe Stock contributor and either have had 300 or more photographs accepted, or made $500/£375 or more from sales.
Zhang Wei, CEO of
Imaginechina is appealing to other stock agencies, particularly editorial producers, to help stop massive photo copyright infringements by Baidu (Nasdaq BIDU). Imaginechina has recently won 38 lawsuits against Baidu over photo copyright infringements.
Shutterstock has announced that they will be testing some new pricing and promotions for their
Offset.com brand in the next few months. Initially, they will only offer these prices to their Enterprise customers (customers who purchase through their Premier Platform). Their posted rates on the website of $249 and $499 will not change. Sources tell us that their tend to be more at the lower price than the higher.
Designers and content marketers alike are familiar with the multi-step process of finding the perfect stock image and optimizing it for multiple dimensions to deliver a seamless experiences across platforms. Ahead of the
Adobe MAX Creativity Conference that will take place in Los Angeles next week from October 15th thru 17th,
Adobe Stock has released
Preview Crop, a new feature that streamlines designer and social media marketer workflows.
Recently, in a discussion with a stock photo agent the subject came up as to what it would take for Getty Images to repair its relationships with the Creator Community. I raised the issue late last year in “
Why Creators Are Dissatisfied With Getty.”
PicRights Europe GmbH, a global leader in copyright compliance, has added a new enforcement partner in Brazil to monetize copyright infringements for the world’s leading news agencies, stock image agencies and independent photographers. PicRights Brazil will augment PicRights’ long established network in major markets in Europe, North America and the Middle East.
Since March Facebook had been researching and testing with 27
fact-checking partners in 17 countries around the world how to fact check false photos and videos. They are regularly onboarding new partners.
Getty Images has just done a deal with
www.animoto.com to provide unlimited video clips to Animoto video producers. Animoto says, “Now when you create marketing videos in Animoto, you'll have unlimited access to our stunning collection of stock photos and video clips at no extra cost beyond your subscription.”
Copytrack and
WENN Media Group (WMG) have announced their future exclusive collaboration. WMG specialized in providing up-to-the-minute entertainment news content with production based in Los Angeles, New York, London and Berlin. Copytrack will provide WMG with the tracking and worldwide legal enforcement of copyright infringement.
Action Press, one of Germany's leading press photo agencies based in Hamburg since 1970, is again independent and privately owned. Ulli Michel, longtime managing director, used the management buy-out option and bought action press out of the
SilverHub UK bankruptcy estate.
Stock agencies do a very poor job of advising photographers what to shoot. Most successful businesses try to keep the people producing their products well informed about what is selling and what isn’t. They don’t want their workers wasting time (and costing them money) producing products no one wants to buy.
The Mega Agency has launched an innovative new service to fight widespread copyright infringement – Mega Image Police (MIP).
The company, a leading provider of news, sports and entertainment content, has beta launched an initiative to quickly identify stolen content and actively pursue damages on behalf of its growing global contributor base.
When I entered the photography profession “Seeing Was Believing.” If there was a visual record of something, then it really happened. Photos were much more important records of events than just words. A still image might not provide an accurate, overall understanding of a particular event, but at least it was an accurate rendition of a moment in time.
No more!
All photographers around the world who are trying to control and earn money from their work should watch, very carefully, what the European Parliament does with
Article 13 of its Copyright Directive. The final EU decision could greatly benefit all photographers whether they live in the EU or not. Tech industry leaders, like
Google and
YouTube, strongly oppose this legislation, because it could force them to use automated content filtering systems to insure that copyrighted material is not being distributed without permission on their platforms. The law states that digital companies should put "effective content recognition systems" in place.
Getty Images has just sent out a promotion – probably mostly to photographers – to show
Conceptual Realism. The implication is that customers want more of this type of imagery and photographers should be shooting more of it and supplying it to the agency.
Is Such Imagery Really What Customers Want? I can’t believe that most of what is being shown in this gallery are images that customers are actually licensing for use.
Many in the industry are concerned about the level of Getty Images debt and what that might mean for the future of the company. The following is some general information about the financial status of the company. It is not clear how the debt might affect the future. Getty Images has about $2.367 billion in debt. About $1.8 billion of that is in Term Loans at 4.37%. Back in 2012 they had about $2 billion in Term Loans so in the past six years it appears they have paid down about $200 million of the principal in addition to the annual interest. The terms of these loans is unclear and may vary.
Getty Images, has agreed to make Getty’s award-winning collection of sports, news, entertainment, archival and creative images available to enhance the voice responses from Alexa on all Echo devices with a screen. Exactly how image creators will be compensated for this use of their images has not been explained.
In an effort to drive more Marketplace sales
Storyblocks has lowered its commission to 50%. When the company (then known as Videoblocks) launched its Marketplace offering in 2015 the company offered still images and video clips at dramatically, discounted prices compared to its competitors. However, they paid creators 100% of the money received from the licensing of their work. As a result creators ended up earning more for each image licensed than they would if the image was licensed by one of the other stock agencies that paid royalties that were a small percentage of the total license fee.
On September 12th the European Parliament voted in favor of a Copyright Directive by more than 200 votes. The Directive will provide tools to ensure fair remuneration for creators. The landslide vote is clear evidence that the EU intends to apply some controls on the tech giants.
Specialist marine photo library,
Image Quest Marine, is re-launching with the appointment of a new library team. Eleanor Novick is joining the archive as Library Manager, bringing 10 years of industry experience, including over six years working as Senior Picture Researcher at Lebrecht Photo Library.
On August 31st I published the
Photog Income Survey in an effort to get a better idea of what photographers worldwide are able to earn annually from the images they produce. To see all eight questions and some background information before starting to respond to the survey click on this
link.
Scott Andrew Braut passed away on September 7, 2018, just short of his 47th birthday. Known for his big smile and engaging stories, Scott touched everyone he met. After his family, Scott's passion was photography. Known throughout the industry as a tireless advocate for photographers, Scott spoke around the world empowering individuals and businesses to create content.
In today’s stock photo environment, the concept of “survival rights” in a contractual agreement between photographer and stock agency no longer makes sense. Many stock photo agencies have clauses in their photographer contracts that allow the Agency to continue to license rights to the photographer’s images for years after either the photographer or the agency terminate the agreement. If the agreement is “exclusive” then the photographer cannot do anything to try to generate revenue from the images, even if the Agency has not been generating much, or any, revenue from them for the photographer.
Vimeo has announced the launch of
Vimeo Stock, a new global, royalty-free stock marketplace featuring an exclusive collection of high-quality video footage sourced directly from Vimeo’s community of iconic creators. Vimeo Stock unlocks content from Vimeo’s world-renowned community of storytellers, redefining what stock footage can and should look like. Vimeo Stock contributors keep 60-70 percent of revenue generated from their licensed clips (versus the average industry cut of ~35 percent), while subscribers to Vimeo’s paid membership plans always save 20 percent on all stock purchases.
The Getty family has taken full control of
Getty Images Inc. from The Carlyle Group ("Carlyle"). Through the transaction, the Getty family will acquire all of Carlyle's equity interests in Getty Images for cash plus units that provide Carlyle with an ongoing financial interest in the future growth of the Company. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of the third quarter of 2018.