At Visa pour l'Image in France earlier this month Olivier Laurent of the British Journal of Photography interviewed Jonathan Klein, CEO and co-founder of Getty Images. Among the issues discussed were falling prices, the future of the industry, the need for new economic models and the role of smartphones in a market in flux. The entire article can be found
here.
Major League Baseball Properties (MLBP) and global digital media company Getty Images today announced a long-term extension of their successful partnership. Getty Images will continue to serve as the exclusive commercial photography partner of Major League Baseball (MLB) and exclusive licensor of the entire MLB image archive.
Getty is telling debt investors (people who buy corporate bonds and corporate debt) that 70% of iStockphoto revenue is generated by exclusive images. They also say that total iStock revenue annually is around $300 million. iStock revenue declined 9% in Q2 2013 compared with Q2 2012. Thus, about $90 million of Getty’s revenue comes from non-exclusive images and $210 million from exclusive
After reading about the new
Facebook TOS I began to wonder if Facebook would be able to resell images their advertisers acquire from Shutterstock as part of the new
Facebook/Shutterstock deal.
Getty Images rising debt compared to earnings (EBITDA) is worrying debt investors. Moody’s is reviewing the company to determine if they need to lower their Rating of the company’s debt. Getty has $2.6 billion in outstanding debt including an approximate $1.9 billion term loan, $550 million of 7% notes due October 2020 and $150 million line of credit. Gross revenue for the year ending June 30, 2013 revenue was $897 million.
In June 2013
VisualSteam conducted a survey of over 1,000 art buyers, designers, creative directors, photo editors, service managers (and more), from agencies, design firms, publishers and corporations in the U.S. to determine “What Buyers Want.” They received a statistically valid response. For detailed results see the 5 page pdf or a longer video presentation
here.
Disability Images has created a body of work that focuses on empowerment and accessibility, and reflects the lives of people with disabilities who run companies, have families, participate in sports, study, learn and enjoy life.
As of September 5th Facebook has modified its Terms of Use to allow the company to sell virtually anything that is uploaded to the site, including all your photos, your identity and your data. Facebook has explicitly removed the privacy protection from the commercialization rights.
Clearly Shutterstock is on a growth curve in terms of number of images downloaded and revenue. According to debt investors (those who trade in corporate bonds and corporate debt) Getty’s revenue has been declining over the last three quarters and the company’s expenses have been increasing due to increased marketing costs. To get back in the game Getty has to try to take market share from Shutterstock.
Many Internet users seem to believe that it is OK to use any image they find online for wallpaper on their site. The next step is to grab a bunch of images they like and create a site that makes the images available to others for free wallpaper use. And, once they’ve gone to the trouble to create a site the site owners figure they might as well make a little money by selling a few ads.
After the announcement of the
Shutterstock/Facebook agreement that makes images available FREE of charge to businesses that advertise on Facebook, I contacted Shutterstock for additional clarification.
In this time of ever declining stock photo prices it is great when we can report a significant license fee for stock images. Last week one of the remaining, small, independent photo agencies negotiated a campaign of global scope entailing unlimited print, web and marketing uses of 7 images for a period of 10 years for a total fee of $415,000.
Many traditional RF and RM agencies and production companies are adding images to the
Offset collection. I’ve found images from Blend, Aurora, Tetra, National Geographic, Westend61, fStop, Johner, Gallery Stock, Cavan Images and Radius Images in the few searches I’ve conducted.
At the recent Interactive Advertising Bureau’s 2013 Digital Content NewFronts conference in New York 75% of the senior executives attending said they plan to shift more of their advertising budget from television to digital video ads over the next year.
Shutterstock has done a deal with Facebook that will give businesses that advertise on Facebook
FREE access to the Shutterstock library that now totals more than 28 million images. Each time a Facebook advertiser licenses a Shutterstock image the Shutterstock artist will earn a royalty – presumably the $0.25 to $0.40 subscription rate.
ImageBrief that connects creative and marketing professionals to a curated network of more than 7,500 professional photographers in 115 countries has published an
infographic that outlines some of the risks professional photographers face in the current market.
The American Society of Media Photographers, joined by National Press Photographers Association (
NPPA), The Digital Media Licensing Association (
PACA), American Photographic Artists (
APA), This Week in Photography (
TWiP), Professional Photographers of America (
PPA), Coordination of European Picture Agencies Stock, Press and Heritage (
CEPIC), Graphic Artists Guild (
GAG) and American Society of Picture Professionals (
ASPP), has mounted a campaign to address the far-reaching Terms of Use of the image sharing service Instagram.
Getty Images has made a number of strategic decisions in the past few years that have resulted in declines in both its “Creative” (RM and RF) and microstock lines of business. These decisions have also aided Shutterstock in its rise to a commanding position in the market with its subscription licensing model. I want to emphasize that when I talk about declines I am not referring to Getty’s other lines of business - Editorial, Footage, Other or B2B music – which as far as I can tell are still growing.
Getty Images has watched the rise of Shutterstock – to the company’s chagrin – and is trying to build Thinkstock to a position where it can take market share away from Shutterstock. Read this story to see why I think Getty is unlikely to be successful and why their fortunes are likely to further decline.
Photographers who are licensing their images based on usage (RM) need to give some careful thought to the lag time between creation and when they are likely to see any money. This is particularly true if they are licensing their images through an agency as the lag time seems to be getting longer and longer.
ASMP has published “
The Instagram Papers,” a very valuable analysis of Instagram Terms of Service. Every photographer who is considering posting images on Instagram, wants to retain control of his/her images and hopefully earn some money from them should be familiar with the information in this report.
Looking for inspiration? Check out
Blend Images The Blog! at blog.blendimages.com for amazing photos, illustration, graphics and fine art. For a little over a year now the stock photo production company has been regularly showing small collections of the work of amazing visual artists. The works are not limited to photography, but include, illustration, painting, collage, architecture, music, video and more.
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.