Index Stock Imagery Responding To The Recent Changes In The Stock Photo Subscription Market

One of the major disadvantages of blog content management systems is certainly that you have to go back to a special entry to see if someone has responded. The following is a comment that doesn´t deserve to vanish in the comment area.

Bahar Gidwani of Index Stock Imagery today responds to the recent entry "The War Continues: Jupitermedia Launches JupiterImages Unlimited Subscription Service". He writes:

Thanks for asking how we will respond to the recent changes in the subscription market. As you know, I responded immediately to Getty's move with a comparison on my blog between their sub and ours. (http://www.dimdump.com/dimdump/2005/08/industry_commen.html)

The comparison was unflattering, to the Getty product. After I did it, I learned that Getty's sub has yet another hole in it. I'm told that the right to use images from the sub ends, if the subscription ends! That means that tons of Getty sub users could be hammered for infringement, if they keep using a subscription image they thought was royalty-free, after the end of their sub!

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I haven't written anything about the Jupiter sub, because there isn't much to say. It is a great product that pushes the envelope further for the subscription area. Their move was the right, natural, and needed next step, for their business model. As such, it represents a direct challenge to Getty's existing business (and to the livelihood of any stock agent that has not yet understood that it MUST have a subscription product to survive, longer term!)

Our subscription continues to differ from Jupiter's on a few fronts:

1. Even though we have fewer images, we have more variety of styles. That is because we have more individual contributors to our sub, as we continue to exploit the advantage of NOT owning images.

2.  Our subscription is cheaper and our search engine is faster and more powerful.

3. We automatically link our subscription to our huge one-off library of images. Jupiter can't yet match our 900,000 one-off licensing image library--with its huge array of 700,000 RM images.

I expect Getty's move to encourage more traditional agencies to release a subscription. I expect Jupiter's move to discourage others from even trying to catch up. As usual, a middle-sized agency like mine will keep trying to be a nimble, responsive, innovative, and tenacious "mouse." We like seeing the "cats" and "dogs" fight with each other--it gives us a chance to look for scraps! The subscription model and the new Adobe Stock Photo Service will both rip holes in the walls Getty has built around our industry. We plan to keep scrambling through those holes, and keep finding bits of bread and cheese to bring home to feed our artists.