The 2011-12 school year is about to begin. The use of printed books is
declining. Many school systems will expand their use of computer and
iPads this school year. Beginning in kindergarten children will be
taught using digital devices.
iStockphoto COO Kelly Thompson will be moving from Calgary to Manhattan in September to become Senior Vice President, Product Development for Getty Images. He will lead a team of Getty Images and iStock Product Managers as they evolve the packaging and positioning of iStockphoto.com, Thinkstock.com, Photos.com and Clipart.com.
Editor's Note: James West, CEO of Alamy, provided a detailed explanation of the company's Alamy Permium Account strategy on the Alamy blog. For more information about this read
our story published last week and contributor comments on the
Alamy blog.
It’s time to institute a new pricing model. In the ‘80s the only pricing
model was Rights Managed (RM), but the term itself wasn’t even invented
until the ‘90s. Back then every price was based on usage and there was
no other option. In the early ‘90s Royalty Free (RF) was introduced. In
the early 2000s microstock came into existence. Now, it is time to
introduce a fourth model which I will call Use Pricing (UP). The
following would be some of the characteristics of Use Pricing.
In May Peter Phun published an article on BlackStar Rising entitled “
It’s Time for Pro Photographers and Hobbyists to Call a Truce.” The article has received a lot of comments. I would like to weigh in with my thoughts on the difference between professionals and non-professionals.
In certain segments of the stock photo market Alamy has been experimenting with both price points and the nature of licenses in an effort to grow sales and stem the tide of customers moving to microstock. One particular segment where they have seen a significant decline in sales is travel. Recently, one of Alamy's travel customers outlined for me the details of Alamy's new offer. This story examines the issue.
In the digital world everyone loves to work for free. Particularly when it is an opportunity to help someone else earn money as a result of their efforts. With that in mind
Magnum Photos is looking for
volunteers to help them tag their online archive. If you’re interested sign up
here.
According to the NY Daily News
Getty Images may sell its WireImage celebrity and entertainment division to
Reuters for something “north of $300 million.” The deal could be announced in the next two weeks. Getty acquired WireImage in 2007 when it purchased MediaVast Image for $207 million.
After lowering royalty rates for non-exclusive contributors in January, iStockphoto introduced a
new strategy in early May that made it possible for non-exclusive contributors to offer a portion of their images at higher prices. Non-exclusive contributors are now allowed to nominate up to 15% of their total portfolios for inclusion in the Photos+ brand.
Footage.net, the stock, archival and news footage search engine, has
launched a new subscriber analytics site, providing content partners
with instant access to key stats on site activity and user interaction
with their data and content.
Shannon Fagan, a very successful former New York stock photographer, has
set up shop in China as a consultant and content aggregater. He has
spent a cumulative equivalent of 2 years in Shanghai and Beijing since
2006 working with, and doing business development for, China's
commercial photo agency sector. He permanently moved to Beijing in
December last year. He has interacted with nearly all the key players,
support components, and service providers, and developed an “insider’s”
knowledge of the opportunities and pitfalls of China’s stock photo
industry. This interview provides
some insights into the Chinese market.
Corbis Images has acquired
Splash News for an undisclosed amount. From its Los Angeles base Splash provides candid celebrity photography and video content to the world’s premiere print, online and broadcast media distributors of entertainment news.
The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) has introduced a comprehensive new
Social Media Tutorial on its website,
asmp.org. The information is intended to guide imaging professionals through the ins and outs of the networking sites which have become an integral part of the business of photography. Contributors are experts in their fields who provide state-of-the-art data on social media marketing, blogging, posting images and video, legal considerations and terms of service.
After reading my story “
Getting Images Seen” on how Getty Images orders search returns John Lund did some searches for his own images on the Getty web site. He came up with some additional insights. Check out the full text of his article on his
blog.
As photographers head off for vacations with plans to shoot the
locations they intend to visit, Alamy has supplied some statistics on
the worlds most photographed cities based on the number of images in its
collection. I’ve provided their analysis below, but I thought it would
be fun to compare the number of images on Alamy with the numbers on
Getty Images, Shutterstock and Dreamstime. Keep in mind that Alamy has a
lot of editorial celebrity and red carpet images in its numbers.
Consequently, there is very little correlation between the Alamy numbers
and those offered by Getty creative or the microstock agencies.
After I published “
50 Year Licensed For Rights Managed” James West provided some clarifications and explanations of why Alamy has offered a 50 year license to one customer. See his explanation and some additional comments by Jim Pickerell.
After reading my story on
why usage fees will continue to decline Larry Minden wrote, “Is there no one among the thousands upon thousands represented by Alamy who will stand up to those idiots and tell them a 50-year license is unneeded and an absurd bastardization of an RM license?" This story explains why complaints from suppliers are unlikely to have much effect in the long term outcome.
Shutterstock has introduced a new tool in the Shutterstock Darkroom
section of its site that is designed to help contributors better
understand Keyword Trends. The tool allows them to compare five keywords
at a time in order to determine the relative number of times a
particular keyword is used to request images on Shutterstock.
Photographers complain that stock photo fees are way below what it costs
them to produce images. And they are right. But, the prices volume user
pay for images will continue to decline. Here’s why.
Anyone who has been in the photo business for any length of time knows
that Jay Maisel is one of the truly great photographers and a
first-class person. His unique vision kept him busy for over 40 years
shooting annual reports, magazine covers, jazz albums, advertising and
more for clients worldwide until he retired from active commercial work
in the late ‘90s. This story is about what happened when an artist of this caliber exercised his right to protect his work.
In November of last year we wrote about World Assignments,
an organization designed to help buyers find photographers who worked in
various locales around the world or had expertise in working in such locations.
Alamy has announced that its US sales of the company’s images have
increased 30% in the past year and as a result they have contracted with
the New York Internet Company (NYI) will oversee its infrastructure
upgrade for North America, starting in New York.
In 2009 I started to use
iStockcharts to track about 196 of the top 250 sellers on iStockphoto. While figures for the other 54 of the 250 contributors were available, their names were not. Consequently I left them out of my research. iStock has over 100,000 contributors, but it is believed that well over 90% of the images in the collection and well over 90% of the total downloads belong to the 37,085 contributors whose information is available on iStockcharts.
PhotoShelter (
http://www.photoshelter.com) has released a new e-book entitled
The Photographer’s Guide to Selling Like a Pro. The book provides photographers with concrete strategies and firsthand insight on how to grow a photography business through better sales tactics. It provides key business tips direct from veteran sales leaders in the fields of advertising, automotive, travel, insurance, and home shopping industries.
Getty Images has notified agencies (Image Partners), whose work is currently being licensed by Photolibrary, of Getty’s intention to “retire” (close down) all the Photolibrary websites during the last quarter of 2011.