More and more frequently RM photographers are receiving notes from their agencies, or the production companies representing their work, suggesting that they move some of their older images to RF. This make sense for images that might have been good seller at one time, but haven’t made any sales in the last year or so.
As image databases get larger and larger, keywording becomes more and more important as photographers try to get their work high enough in the search-return-order for the images to be seen. Often creators must spend more time keywording than they spend taking pictures. In addition, image distributors are constantly coming up with new strategies that often necessitate going back and re-keywording images that have already been uploaded.
DMLA together with various other visual arts associations (what we are loosely referring to a Coalition of Visual Artists –DMLA, APA, ASMP, GAG, NPPA, NANPA, and PPA) filed a joint response to a proposed rulemaking by the Copyright Office on Group Registration of Photographs.
As of January 19, 2017
Shutterstock had 119,292,457 royalty free stock images in its collection according to www.microstock.top. They had added 1,352,852 new stock images during the week. I recently discovered microstock.top which provides some very detailed breakdowns of Shutterstock contributors. It is unclear how frequently they will update this information, but it is the kind of information that can help everyone in the industry – Shutterstock contributor or not – have better understanding of Shutterstock’s business.
Action by the DMLA and other photography trade associations successfully headed off proposed legislation by the Maryland Senate Finance Committee aimed at preventing copyright owners from “making certain assertions of copyright infringement in bad faith”. The bill stipulated that a court may consider, among other factors, the absence of a certificate of copyright registration accompanying the letter as evidence of bad faith.
Based on the number of downloads Shutterstock had in the
first three quarters it looks like they will report about 167,000,000 total downloads for 2016 when they report their full year numbers on February 27, 2017. Last year
they reported 147,200,000 downloads for 2015.
500px has also announced a collaboration with Adobe to introduce a select set of 500px images to Adobe Stock users within the
Adobe Stock Premium Collection.
Some Getty Images RF contributors have begun to share sales data with iStock Signature contributors and are coming to the conclusion that they can earn more money from images in the iStock Signature collection than from images on Gettyimages.com.
Shutterstock says they are “testing” new subscription options that allow customers to download either 10 or 50 images per month. The prices for these packages are $29 and $99 respectively on an annual purchase plan. This seems to be a reaction to the iStock and Adobestock subscription offerings (see chart below) that have been in place for some time.
Twenty-five to 30 years ago there was a large demand for stock images relative to supply. Prices to use a stock image -- while reasonable when compared to what it cost to hire a photographer for an assignment -- were much higher than they are today. It was possible for a professional photographer to produce a lot of images that no one wanted to buy, and still earn a decent living from the few that did sell.