As revenues have declined in recent years due to declining sales for the use of images in print, and increasing use of images on the web at much lower prices, many French editorial agencies have found it necessary to reorganize. Jean Michel Psaila, CEO and owner of
Abaca Press says, “The market has changed. We used to get €200 for print use. Now we get €5 for online use.”
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced a three-year deal with The Associated Press (AP) to distribute AP's daily global photo and packaged video output for license to customers based in the United States. This milestone will also give U.S. Shutterstock editorial customers access to over 30 million photos and nearly 2 million video clips from, respectively, AP Images and AP Archive.
Dreamstime has made changes to its Extended License policy allowing users to produce unlimited copies of purchased media. Previously, customers purchased extended licenses for print or web usage of an image and were restricted by limits on the number of copies they could reproduce, for example for t-shirts, on-demand printed items, or e-cards.
If you’re a Getty contributor and your sales and revenue have been declining, it may be time to do some searches on Gettyimages.com as a customer would search. Input some of the generic keywords that a customer might use to find your images. See where your images fall in the search return order.
If you’re in the editorial photography business keep your eye on
The Mega Agency. This company is a new editorial stock agency founded by the people who started Splash. Splash later became a key part of the Corbis editorial offering.
It seems to me that all VCG bought when they acquired Corbis was: (1) The right to put out a press release saying, “We are the largest stock photo source in China,” (2) The removal of Corbis content from ImagineChina, which many believe was previously the largest stock photo agency in China, and (3) We bought a company from Bill Gates. Rumor has it that Bill Gates was paid $225 million for Corbis.
While there has been a great deal of discussion recently about the possibility of Congress creating a small claims process for visual arts, several visual artist groups, representing hundreds of thousands of creators, have joined forces to propose key components of potentially forthcoming small claims legislation. Collectively, the groups represent photographers, photojournalists, videographers, illustrators, graphic designers, artists, and other visual artists as well as their licensing representatives.
Getty Images has contacted Veer contributors to explain what will happen to their imagery as a result of the
sale of Corbis to VCG. Their imagery will not be integrated into the Getty Images collection. Veer contributors may apply to iStock for possible upload of their content there. The memo says:
Pond5 has improved its systems for searching and finding the right video clip or image. In addition, it has introduced a Membership offering that provides significant saving for customers who pay monthly or annual subscription fees.
A photographer recently asked if I could explain why
Shutterstock is making such an aggressive effort to grow its collection. Currently, the company over 77 million images in its collection and is adding over 800,000 new images a week. As far as I can tell Shutterstock believes their customers want more and more choice not only in subject matter, but in newer, more updated images.
Shutterstock has reported Q4 2015 revenue of $115.9 million and a total of $425.1 million in revenue for all of 2015. The full year revenue was up about 30% from $328 million in 2014. Approximately, $8.6 million of the annual revenue was generated by Rex Features and PremiumBeat that were acquired during Q1 2015, and the impact of foreign currency exchanges. Excluding these contributions to revenue the company’s revenue growth was approximately 27% in 2015 down from 39% in the previous year.
The Good News -- Getty has started offering some Corbis contributors who also have an existing contract with Getty the chance to have their Corbis images migrated to Getty.
The Bad News – One contributor was earning a 40% royalty on his Non-Exclusive RM contract with Corbis. Now Getty has offered him an agreement that gives him a 25% royalty.
Tomas Speight has joined
Panther Media GmbH as Chief Executive Officer. He will initiate a drive to grow the business into a global presence. Panther Media has a range of initiates relating to clients, international partnerships, as well as new content lines that will be launched in the near future. Further innovations beneficial to both photographers and clients are in the pipeline.
Many photographers who used to earn hundreds, and even thousands, of dollars for the use of one of their images think Shutterstock, and Microstock in general, are killing the stock photo business. Some Shutterstock contributors are even beginning to ask the same question. A reader recently asked for my analysis of why Shutterstock’s continued addition to its collection of over 700,000 new images a week won’t “drown it’s customers and risk losing its best contributors.”
Getty Images has sent Corbis contributors the following information about the migration of Corbis material to Getty representation. While some questions have been answered there are still a number of issues that are not clear.
The three public companies in the stock photo industry –
Getty Image, Shutterstock and
AdobeStock -- face major challenges that will probably be impossible for them to overcome. Adobe is the possible exception because it can approach the stock image side of its business as a loss-leader that supports the other 98% of its business.
Another leading global market research company,
Technavio, headquartered in London, has taken a look at the
global still image market and concluded that it will exceed USD 4 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of over 7%.
Since publishing “
Next Step For Corbis Photographers” last week, I’ve been contacted by a number of agents interested in talking to Corbis photographers who might be looking for somewhere else to place their work.
I’m getting a lot of requests from Corbis photographers that basically ask, “What should I do now!” Indications are that fewer than 20% of Corbis photographers will be offered Getty contracts. The actual number may be significantly less. Knowing who will and won’t be selected may not happen quickly. This story offers more thoughts on what's likely to happen and offers options for photographers to consider
Increasing numbers of stock photo buyers seem to be deciding that ever larger collections of images are not for them. At least as a first stop. The big question is finding an alternative since most of the better known sites – both microstock and traditional – are racing to add more images.
It may be time for stock shooters to take another look at
Image Brief. It started out as a place where customers would go to list a brief explaining the kind of imagery they needed for their next project.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced an exclusive global syndication deal with
BFA, a leading lifestyle, fashion, art and entertainment content creation agency. Over 1.7 million editorial images in the BFA collection will now be available to Shutterstock’s Premier customers, which include some of the largest marketing communications companies and publishing houses in the world.
Both
Adobe and
Shutterstock have recently posted information on tends they have spotted that they think will continue to build in 2016.
Adobe Stock has added over 100,000 4K video assets to its current collection of over one-million video assets. The site also offers over 45 million images and graphics. This story shows how that compares with other footage providers.
Visual Connections returns to Chicago on Thursday, May 5th to stage another networking and education event for art buyers and researchers who need images and footage. The venue will be the conveniently located Ivy Room at Tree Studios.