T3Media, Inc. (formerly Thought Equity Motion), a leading provider of cloud-based video management and licensing services, has announced the launch of a new licensing offering—
Paya ™ (Pay-ya), the world's index of licensable content™. To watch a short video that explains how Paya works, click
here.
Universal Images Group (UIG), owned by industry veteran George Sinclair (also the founder of the Virtual Picture Desk in 2002 and co-author of Britannica’s Image Quest), has acquired the business rights and digital library of the
MyLoupe and the
Ad Stock Images picture agencies.
In November 2010 the UK government called for an independent review of
the Intellectual Property laws and practices and assigned Professor Ian
Hargreaves and a panel of experts to prepare a report. The report,
submitted in May 2011, made 10 recommendations designed to ensure that
the UK has an IP framework “best suited to supporting innovation and
promoting economic growth in the digital age.” I'd like to recommend a different approach.
Since 2005 MediaStorm has produced 30 powerful,
issue-driven video stories about real life people and problems. All this work has been available for free on their
website. Most of these stories have been viewed a million or more times and they tend to draw large audiences outside the photo industry.
In the near future photographers can expect to see are some dramatic
changes in the way subscriptions are defined. Until now, most
subscriptions have allowed customers to download 25 images per day for
the duration of the subscription ranging from 1
month to 1 year. Now a number of new options are being introduced.
Stock photographers regularly complain about the “Race To The Bottom” in
terms of pricing and they look for someone to blame. Favorite whipping
boys are Getty Images, Alamy and microstock. But, these distributors are
not really the problem. The problem is technology.
Anyone thinking about setting up their own fully functional search engine to license images should read
Yuri Arcurs article about the trials and tribulations he went through in creating
PeopleImages.com.
Universal Images Group (UIG) has now opened an office in New York. This
is in addition to its offices in Chicago, USA; Rome, Italy and
Chelmsford in the UK. The business has achieved triple digit revenue
growth through distribution and electronic publishing in the past year
and it has become essential to provide a further production &
editing center in USA.
Every few months I put together a summary of some of our most important
recently published stories. This selection is designed to help investors
who are trying to understand the industry as well as image creators
just beginning to explore the idea of licensing their images. Regular
readers will have seen these stories. Please refer friends interested in
licensing images to this series of articles.
Evolve Images (
www.evolveimages.com) has announced that Lewis Blackwell has joined the company as Chief Creative Officer. Blackwell brings to Evolve an impressive array of credentials with leading experience in the image creation and licensing industry, as well as deep knowledge and active membership of the image-buying community.