StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

QuickLinks For 2007-08-31

• YouTube to pay royalties:
  The deal with the British organization, MCPS-PRS Alliance, which collects royalties for British musical artists, is believed to be the first full agreement. Analysts suggest it could run into the tens of millions of dollars.
  More in the AP story:
  •YouTube to Pay British Licenser for Use of Songs (NYT)
  •YouTube Agrees to Music Royalty Deal For U.K. Performers and Songwriters (WSJ)

This prediction will quickly become reality

Details.

QuickLinks For 2007-08-30, II

• Newspapers’ Ad Revenue Going From Worse To Worst:
  A series of articles in E&P today offered a range of the newspaper industry’s health - and the prognosis went from terrible, with a brief respite, at one end to endless deterioration at the other.
  David Kaplan/paidContent.
  Related: "The stock photo business is based on selling pictures for print uses".
  (can´t remember the source)

QuickLinks For 2007-08-30

• Getty Images Director Alan G. Spoon Buys 10,000 Shares:
  A director of Getty Images bought 10,000 shares of stock, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday. In a Form 4 filed with the SEC, Alan G. Spoon reported he bought the shares for $31.11 apiece on Friday.
  Insiders file Form 4s with the SEC to report transactions in their companies' shares. Open market purchases and sales must be reported within two business days of the transaction.
  Forbes/AP story. GYI is at $31.13, up $2.12 from its recent 52Wk low of $29.01.
  Alan G. Spon has been a director for Getty since May 2006 and managing general partner of Polaris Ventures focussed on investments in digital media/e-commerce.

View, share and discuss imagery: Corbis can be your Second Life

Corbis is the first major stock photo industry player to have a presence in Second Life, the 3-D virtual world with more than nine million members.

Corbis will present visual content from different Corbis collections, SnapVillage, Corbis Rights Services as well as Corbis Motion.

Image licensing will not be available at this time via Second Life.

QuickLinks For 2007-08-29

• "Alive in Baghdad: Can Citizen Journalism Done Right Pay the Bills?:
  Alive in Baghdad is arguably the best-positioned citizen news video outfit in the world... .

 

 

QuickLinks For 2007-08-28, II

• New Getty Images RF brand Valueline:
  We talked in Florence also about the midstock model of Panthermedia and  LuckyOliver´s Sideshow. Now midstock is no longer a domain only of Panthermedia and LuckyOliver.
  Getty Images is "slicing off a portion of its portfolio to sell as midstock [under the new RF brand Valueline starting on August 31]. 100,000 royalty free photos will be removed from the bulging Getty portfolio to be sold under the Valueline brand at Punchstock.com. The images were all created prior to December 2005 and are drawn from various collections that Getty owns or markets for the photographers.
  Prices start at US$19 for a small web-sized image. All other sizes are US$49. This places them firmly in the midstock range - lower than macrostock prices that generally start around US$300, but higher than microstock prices will typically peak at US$10.
  Getty also failed to convert microstock buyers to their full-price products".
  Free abstract over at Lee Torrens, full article on Selling-Stock.

QuickLinks For 2007-08-28

• Brazil Propels Fotolog:
  Executives at Fotolog Inc. cheered in 2002 when they saw a surge in the number of people using their photo-sharing and social-networking Web site. Then they scratched their heads: The explosive growth was in Brazil.
  Yesterday, New York-based Fotolog was acquired by Hi-Media Group, an Internet advertising firm based in Paris, for about $90 million, making it the latest acquisition of a social-networking Web site and the first one with a user base largely outside the U.S.
  Antonio Regalado/WSJ (requires subscription).

Photosharing and social networking site Fotolog to be sold to french Hi-Media Group for $90 million

While the small stock photo world is talking about Getty Images´new revamped website and the new low-priced web resolution images, the big news today, now official after earlier rumors, is the agreement that the french interactive media company and electronic micropayment solution provider Hi-Media Group will acquire Fotolog for $90 million.

QuickLinks For 2007-08-27

• The Bizzaro World of Orphan Works:
  In the upcoming Bizarro World of Photography, if you do an unspecified "good faith search" for the owner of an image and you can´t find the owner, you can assume you can use the image.
  [But if] the publisher can’t find the photographer of a photo and while searching the Orphan Database, the photo editor finds one close enough, with ownership information. The database just became a stock agent of some sort, by linking the photo editor with a new photographer and suitable photo.
  We just created a new revenue stream for photographers from the orphan works legislation. Will photographers ever let this happen?
  Stanley Rowin/Pro Photo Business Blog.