The Editorial Relations Committee of PACA (Picture Archive Council of
America) has released updated suggestions for dealing with educational
publishers. Digital technology is rapidly changing the way educational
materials are being developed and used. During this transition period
image licensors need to be particularly vigilant if they hope to receive
reasonable compensation for the long range use of their imagery.
Microstock Group has published the preliminary results of its 2011 survey of microstock contributors. So far more that 700 people have responded, but there is still time for anyone involved in microstock to
add additional information before the final results are tallied.
Corbis Images has launched
OnDemand: Entertainment, a flexible entertainment subscription service. The entertainment subscriptions provide customers with exclusive access to the industry’s most comprehensive collection of breaking entertainment and iconic celebrity imagery. The service will be available to customers worldwide searching for compelling creative content to showcase their celebrity and entertainment related news.
Since September 2011 photography and illustration students have submitted more than 3,000 images to
Alamy,
the world's largest online stock photography agency. For the next two
years these contributors will receive 100% of all money collected for
the licensing of their images.
One thing that has intrigued me about the microstock business is the
role designers and illustrators play as content creators and how their
participation on the seller side of the market influences imagery supply
and demand. Shutterstock recently reported that in 2011 32% of the
company’s total downloads were vector illustrations and that in the last
5 years customers have trended to move away from using photographs to
illustrate certain concepts and toward the use of very graphic
illustrations.
This article provides a selection of stories that will help the reader
better understand microstock photography and the state of the market for
images at microstock prices at the beginning of 2012. Some of the
stories in this list were written as much as two years ago, but provide
background on the subject.
iStockphoto has announced a new app that lets anyone create fast, fun
and free e-cards for use on Facebook. Customer surveys have revealed
that e-cards have become more acceptable and often preferred to
traditional cards.
Crestock has launched a collection of celebrity photos at microstock prices at
http://www.crestock.com/celebrities/. The collection contains real time coverage of popular stars from coast to coast supplied by top entertainment photographers, supplemented with an archive of past celebrity events – all from ImageCollect/Los Angeles.
Corbis Images (
www.corbisimages.com) and The Associated Press (
www.ap.org) are rolling out a monthlong social media photo showcase called “Perceptions.” The showcase on Facebook seeks commentary from people who view selected images from the cross-distribution collaboration between the two companies announced in January.
Shutterstock (
www.shutterstock.com) has delivered more than 200 million licensed image downloads to its customers since its founding in 2004. This number far exceeds that of any other company licensing rights to stock photography. The company’s closest competitor in the microstock arena is iStockphoto. According to the latest figures from
istockcharts.multimedia.de iStock has licensed 116,134,740+ downloads. (The + probably represents a few thousands above this number.)