Shutterstock has announced the availability of a curated collection of images within Amazon's newly launched Posters & Prints program. A dedicated Shutterstock storefront on Amazon will give customers access to thousands of images that they can select to have printed and delivered - all without leaving Amazon.
The Mega Agency, a provider of news, sports and entertainment content, has announced the launch of a revolutionary payment system that allows content providers to ‘cash-out’ on their media sales the moment content has been licensed to select customers.
Dissolve has provided its contributors with information about a special marketing campaign - Dissolve for a Cause - it has launched. Under this program, agencies and studios working on pro bono projects may apply to receive up to $2,500 in royalty-free footage or photography.
In the next few months I intend spend a lot of time examining the question, “
Can the stock photo industry raise prices on at least some of the images it offers?” The possible answers to that question are either YES, NO or MAYBE.
Can the stock photo industry survive if it is only a business of amateur suppliers? It is certainly on road to becoming that business. Gross sale rates have declined so much that most photographers who need revenue from the images they produce to support themselves and their business can no longer justify continued production. (Check out stories
here and
here.
Getty’s ESP system for supplying information about their sales to iStock contributors certainly offers much more information than was previously available. Unfortunately, this information may point to an overpayments problem. It all revolves around cancelled sales.
Frans Lanting, one of the world's foremost nature photographers, is looking to hire a DIGITAL ASSET MANAGER. See this article for core responsibilities and contact information
In the article “
Understanding Editorial At Shutterstock” I reported on a London photographer had to find uses of his images and report the uses to Shutterstock in order to be paid. Shutterstock provided a clarification pointing out that they use the same procedures as other editorial agencies to track usages of their images.
It is worth looking at recent
Shutterstock statistics. In the conference call yesterday Shutterstock said they had over 190,000 contributors at the end of 2016. In 2016 Shutterstock paid out about $138.400,000 to contributors. If we divide the total number of images in the collection (116,200,000) into contributor royalties on average contributors received $1.19 per-image in the collection for the full year.
Recently, I was contacted by a Business School student who is developing an app that “will be used by internet publication firms, as well amateur and professional photographers.” He asked if I would provide some insight into the industry, specifically on topics such as photographer compensation, and the market share of "real photo’s" vs. stock photos. Here’s my response.