In June 2014,
Visual Steam surveyed thousands of U.S. art buyers, art directors, art producers, creative directors and marketing professionals to better understand stock image buying behavior today (still photography and motion). The company has published the results of its
2014 Buyers Survey. 100% of the respondents are buyers of stock photography.
Yesterday, I outlined how
iStock’s new pricing strategy may affect contributors. But, the bigger worry for iStock exclusive contributors and Getty Images may be what happens on
gettyimages.com. Here’s why.
Over the weekend
iStock launched its new prices to compete with
Shutterstock. The following chart shows the credit packages available at both iStock and Shutterstock and the average price per credit.
Are your Getty Images sales declining? It may have nothing to do with the quality of your images, the subjects you shoot or your keywording. It could be that customers rarely, if ever, get a chance to see your images. Currently
Gettyimage.com has 4,278,804 RM and 6,034,642 RF images on the site for a total of 10,313,446 in the creative section of the site. Getty has images from 103 different RM collections and 98 RF collections.
Photographer
Espen Haagensen didn’t know his
photo of the Milky Way had been chosen for the background image on iPhone 6 until a colleague who was watching the iPhone 6 announcement gave him a call.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in the motion picture and sound recording industry has dropped from as high as 368,000 in 2013 down to just 298,000 in August, a 19% drop in just over two years. (See
MarketWatch story for more details.
A group of photographers, visual artists and affiliated associations have reached a settlement with Google that ends four years of litigation over copyrighted material in Google Books. The parties are pleased to have reached a settlement that benefits everyone and includes funding for the PLUS Coalition, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping rightsholders and users communicate clearly and efficiently about rights in works. Further terms of the agreement are confidential.
Is
Prime.500px.com a viable market for stock photographers? It advertises itself as offering “Inspirational Royalty Free Photos” and certainly there are some beautiful images in the collection.
Computerworld reports that following a
lawsuit from Getty Images, Microsoft has temporarily removed the beta of the
Bing Image Widget from its website. However, for those people who uploaded the Widget prior to the Getty challenge the Widget still works.
Reuters reports that Getty Images claimed in a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York on Thursday that a new Microsoft product that allows website publishers to embed digital photographs on their sites is a “massive infringement” of copyrighted images.