StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Getty Images withdraws Rights-Ready as stand-alone Licensing Model for Images, but not for Footage

Some may recall the year 2006 when Getty Images introduced the Rights-Ready licensing model for creative stills and the Q4/2006 conference call when Klein said: "The rights-ready model is already getting strong feedback from our customers. The volumes, as well as the average price per image, so far for rights-ready have exceeded our expectations".

Some may even remember Ron Rovtar´s polemic pamphlet "They must be kidding …" (sorry, no link availabe, The Stock Asylum is permanently offline) as of July 26, 2007, when Getty applied this licensing model to the footage collections.

Today, there are messages flying around stating: "The fantastic news last week that Getty has abandoned it[s] failed ‘rights ready’ model, means that the focus of production and demand is firmly turning back to Rights Managed imagery".

After the jump follows Getty´s official statement on this matter from today:

Flickr + Getty Images: An old story* gets new blood

• Great Photo on Flickr? Getty Images Might Pay You For It (NYT Blog):
  Getty will make payments to Flickr, but detailed terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Mr. Klein said that financially the deal will be immaterial for both Yahoo and Getty Images. Over time, however, thousands of Flickr photographers may benefit.
  Getty also runs a site called iStockPhoto, where amateurs contribute photos that the company markets at lower rates. The photos on Flickr are of sufficent quality to demand higher prices, Mr. Klein said.

Revised Getty Images $49 web resolution license

Getty Images notes:

"The refinements address photographers´ concerns specific to licensing duration, distribution and usage for the rights-ready and rights-managed products, while the royalty-free product remains unchanged."

The Stock Artists Alliance more in detail:

 

 

For a higher resolution, open the image above in a new tab or window, or click here.

Below the text version (courtesy of Getty Images) which mentions expressly both for RR and RM that "Licensing for mobile use is no longer included":

 

Stone, Stone+, Photonica: Hey, all you need is a little pocket change

 

 

Besides some general information and the usual PR poetry, Getty Images did not deliver more specific details of their "revolutionary new online image product" in the press release sent out yesterday.

But:

Fotegrafik: New Specialized Agency for Asian Stock Photography

Singapore-based stock agency Fotegrafik (CEO: Ori Cohen) will offer Rights Managed and Royalty Free images and is focused on asian content and asian buyers, "although not exclusively".

The new agency is currently looking for new contributors of images and illustrations and expects to launch fully within the next two or three months.

The conditions for contributors ("you don’t have to be a pro, as long as you feel like one"), which earn between 50-70% of the sales, can be found here. More details in general here.

Lightroom Photos: "Rights Managed Microstock" hits the street

Bedfordshire, UK, based photojournalist under pressure:

Lightroom Photos is a photojournalism archive of documentary and reportage still photographs. The collection numbers some 5,000 stock photo images and new stock photos are added every week. To make the collection more competitive with RF Microstock, Lightroom has reduced it's "seed price" (from which license prices are calculated) to just £25 - which means a 75% reduction in license prices.

This makes us the best-priced and perhaps the only Rights Managed Microstock portal in the world.

Getty Images intends to move The Image Bank imagery from Rights Managed to Rights Ready licensing

Getty Images plans that approximately 90,000 stills from The Image Bank will be transitioning from the Rights Managed (RM) to the Rights Ready (RR) licensing model in about four weeks in mid-May this year, thus "giving customers access to more than 200,000 selections under the RR licensing model".

Prices of The Image Bank imagery under the RR licensing model will be comparable to the pricing of the Iconica collection, Getty says. Since the Rights Ready licensing model does not grant exclusive licenses, Getty´s intention is that "any of The Image Bank still images that currently carry exclusive licenses will move to the Stone or the Taxi Rights Managed collections, along with any images under exclusivity reservation and any attached sisters".

Getty Images Launches Getty Images Live

Only a couple of weeks ago, Getty Images  announced the Lifesize collection and the new Open workflow model.

The holiday season is now over in the US and all of a sudden Getty launches today officially Getty Images "Live", according to the company a new offering and a new way to "interact with imagery". Live allows you to "find the latest editorial imagery" and "to stream a customizable selection of the latest images directly to your desktop".

You Are In: Getty Images Offers Contracts To iStockphoto´s Exclusive Diamond Photographers

With respect to the current developments (Open and the Lifesize Collection) at Getty Images, one of the brighter minds in the stock photo micropayment business invented recently the term of the iStockphotozation of Getty Images, quoted here several times. Jonathan Klein, more in general, talked in late October about "The Continuous Re-invention of Getty Images".

Picade, The New Photographer-Driven Stock Photo Agency: Forget RF Licensing, Photo Portals and Microstock

I recently mentioned the soon to be launched new stock photo agency Picade. One of the founders, Illinois-based photojournalist and stock photo consultant Brian Seed, Picade´s Chairman of the Board, disclosed yesterday more details:

This agency endeavor of ours represents photographers fighting back against those agencies that pay too little, steadily cut their royalty payments, and in general treat photographers as very disposable entities. Our agency has been created and funded  by a hard working group of its members. Any income generated belongs to its members: we have no outside shareholders.

New Photo Agency EyeCandy Images Launched

At the recently held PACA conference in Key West BJ Formento and Richeille Formento announced the launch of their new photo agency EyeCandy Images, which starts with multicultural RF and RM image collections.

BJ Formento, with a strong background as professional photographer and former contributor to Digital Vision, Image Source and Corbis, serves as the company´s CEO; Richeille Formento, a former CD working for Calvin Klein and DKNY, as VP Creative.

According to Richeille, after showcasing EyeCandy´s images for the first time during the PACA, "many of our peers stated that we were as good as, if not better than Photonica".

Getty Images´ Rights-Ready Managed Collection Riser Is Here, License Duration Now Limited To 10 Years

When Getty Images announced the new Rights-Ready licensing model and the new Riser collection in early August, Getty said that Riser will be available in late August, starting with 80,000 images.

Ever since myriads of freaks visited the Creative section of Getty´s website to be under the first to discover the exact conditions and licence images tentatively. Yesterday visitors still had no luck. But today it reads: Rights-ready is here.

View: Turning A Photo Sharing Community Into An Editorial And Stock Image Outlet, Comments From Fotolia

As written earlier and quickly adopted a day later by VISUELL, Gruner + Jahr´s magazine STERN is in the process of developing a new way to sell images from the company-owned photo sharing website View Fotocommunity through a new "portal" called augenzeuge.de. Additionally selected images will be sold through the photo agency Picture Press using the APIS Network. Photographers receive 50% of the revenues, and these amateur photos will be sold under the same pricing projections as if a professional photographer would sell his images.

I jumped at the chance and talked with Andreas Trampe, Head of the editorial department of the STERN picturedesk, and the responsible STERN project manager Alireza Jerani about the new venture. Both explained:

Getty Images: New Rights-Ready Licensing Model, New Rights-Ready Image Collection Riser

As reported earlier, a week ago Jonathan Klein noted during the conference call with investors and analysts that Getty Images will introduce new licensing models in the next months, other than only rights-managed, royalty-free, micropayment (iStockphoto) and subscription models (Creative Express), without explaining more details.

Today Getty Images unveiled the new licensing model called Rights-Ready for creative, corporate and publishing customers, which will be available in late August and, according to a company statement, is the only model of its kind, together with a new 80,000 images rights-ready image collection called Riser.

JupiterImages Acquires Workbook Stock, Strengthens Again Its RM Business

Workbook, Inc., founded in 1977 and based in Los Angeles (CEO Alexis Scott), is the parent company of Workbook Stock, a collection of superior RM imagery predominantly as well as RF images. Other services of Workbook, Inc. include assignment, fine art (framed art for sale), the phonebook (a directory listing of ad agencies, art buyers, etc.) and resources.

The rumors that JupiterImages might at least be interested in acquiring Workbook Stock date back to mid-April, when Jim Pickerell reported in his Story 825 on April 14, 2006, shortly after the PACA conference, that "the most persistent rumor was that Workbookstock would be acquired by Jupiterimages".

JupiterImages Acquires The Beauty Archive Collection

JupiterImages has just announced the acquisition of the UK-based The Beauty Archive Collection, a photo agency that offers rights protected beauty images for advertising, design and editorial.

The Beauty Archive was set up in January 2000 by award winning photographer Hywel Jones "as a small independent specialist library to supply the editorial advertising and design industry with high quality comtemporary rights protected images." The company has agents in 25 countries (e.g IFA Bilderteam/Germany, Isifa Image Service/Czech Republic). Clients of the company include Vogue, Revlon and Thalgo.

JupiterImages Acquires Stock Image/Pixland For m$11

What to do with a $100 million credit you receive shortly before Christmas, especially if you can´t "believe the profit margins" in the Stock Photo Industry? JupiterImages did just what the company had done earlier, continued the shopping tour and has just announced that it has acquired all of the shares of the french company Stock Image S.A.S for approximately U.S. $11.1 million in cash. Stock Image S.A.S is selling rights-managed images through its Stock Image brand and royalty-free images through its Pixland brand.

Party On! After Goodshoot and PR Direct, JupiterImages Acquires Agence Images

After acquiring french image distributor PR Direct a month ago ("JupiterImages Acquires French RF Distributor PR Direct") and the french RF producer Goodshoot (Link) back in May this year, JupiterImages strengthens its position in the french market with the acquisition of all the shares of the french company Agence Images, specialized in the distribution of rights-managed images. While terms of the deal were not disclosed, Laurent DiCostanzo, founder of Agence Images, will lead the combined JupiterImages operations in France.

JupiterImages Launches New Image Collection (re)view, Partners With Photographic Youth Music Culture Archive

JupiterMedia/JupiterImages has announced new activities in the RM-sector:

• To be launched in December 2005, the new image collection "(re)view" is an archive of retro, rights-managed imagery with 4,000 selected images that "each tells a unique story by capturing moments from the past."

"Each of the images in the collection has been carefully selected with a discerning eye for its ability to capture and evoke human connections," said Mitzi Good, collection director for (re)view. More details here.

• The subcultures are coming. JupiterImages had closed an exclusive worldwide partnership with the Photographic Youth Music Culture Archive (PYMCA), a rights-managed image company and "the world's premier archive of youth culture photography". The PYMCA collection is scheduled to launch in early 2006 and is aimed "particularly" at "high-end photo buyers". More details here.

Stock Artists Alliance (SAA) Publishes White Paper: Understanding Stock Licensing Models

The StockArtistsAlliance (SAA) is a trade association

dedicated to the interests of Rights Managed stock photographers worldwide. Now in its third year, SAA is a robust and growing community of professional photographers joined by dedicated photography students and allied professionals. With the support of the global stock community, we continue to expand our programs and initiatives.

The SAA recently published the SAA White Paper (pdf-download):

Understanding Stock Licensing Models SAA recognizes the urgent need to expand industry-wide understanding of how differently the Rights Managed and Royalty Free stock licensing models work for the users, distributors and creators of the images.

Unsurprisingly, The White Paper (11 pages) goes straight to the point:

SAA’s position on the Royalty Free proposition to photographers is frankly expressed in one of our SAA Issue Posters: “You are invited to accept a much lower share of royalties, lose control over your images and your ability to maximize profits from your work. Welcome to the RF business model. Royalty Free licenses give your stock distributor most of the revenues while lowering their overhead with standard pricing, no rights control and ecommerce sales. RF gives the stock buyers your images for any use, anytime, anywhere. What a great deal for them and a lousy deal for the photographers.”
[...]
Royalty Free is a “sore subject” within the photography community and has led to such heated debate because most stock photographers – along with many other industry professionals - are uncomfortable on some level with the RF business model.
It is a harsh reality for stock photographers that Royalty Free is such a firmly entrenched business model for both stock users and stock distributors. RF clearly had a detrimental (and divisive) effect on stock photographers and diminished their ability to profit from their images.

As quoted on the SAA website: "Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." (Margaret Mead)

After "A Brief History of Stock Licensing Models" SAA describes "The Impact of Royalty Free": Lost Revenues, Illogical Pricing, Image Overload, Conflicting Uses, Devaluation of Images. The White Paper continues:

The good news is that Rights Managed continues to offer a viable business opportunity for stock photographers. RM continues to claim a significant segment of the market and maintain strong appeal with discriminating image buyers. We know from industry surveys that clients continue to perceive RM as offering the “freshest” images and they associate it with the highest quality, so the future of RM depends on the continued involvement of the best photographers creating the best images. Rights Managed contracts also continue to offer significantly higher royalties to the photographers. Despite the declines over the past few years, most RM contracts still offer between 30 and 50 percent of the TOTAL license fees received, depending on the specific contract terms offered and whether a sub-distributor also takes a share.
Some new RM brands have been recently introduced with high quality and distinctive positioning, offering more options to clients. Of note, we are also seeing the introduction of RM brands by formerly “all-RF companies” which is further evidence of the continuing viability of the RM licensing model.
There have also been positive developments to simplify the RM licensing process, thereby addressing a key issue with clients looking for a “hassle free” shopping experience. We are seeing efforts by the top distribution channels to streamline their RM pricing structure with simplified online pricing calculators and options for “packaged” uses.
An important new industry initiative called PLUS, the Picture Universal Licensing System [Link], is a work-in-progress with the goal of introducing a standardized and universally recognized licensing vocabulary to simplify the Rights Managed licensing process. This inter-organizational coalition, which SAA has joined as an Advisory Council member, is a significant step in the right direction.
On the marketing and distribution front, there are emerging a variety of newer business models offering fresh options to photographers who are looking for more options and control over how they choose to market their images. Portals, brokers, cooperatives and networks are based on more collaborative approaches that share information with photographers about image needs, search results, licenses made, and provide a range of optional services and variable contract terms.

So, from their point of view, it´s a "pressure to engage". Now.

Istockphoto.com: “Destructive Pricing”

Related story: "
istockphoto.com: "Bringing the price down to a level where everybody can afford to buy a stock photo"

Some quotes from a recent discussion at Stockphoto.net. All started with a message “istockphoto.com is scary for the industry“:

I tried to post this message on alamycontributors group a while back in response to one of Jeff Greenberg's post, but my posts rarely seem to actually get posted over there. Perhaps the moderator doesn't
like me... ;)

To the topic at hand...

http://www.istockphoto.com
[...]
They sell RF images for as little as $0.50 each, and as high as $3.00 each (dependent on file size). The photographer's cut is anywhere from $0.10 to $0.30 per sale.
[...]
There are big companies purchasing these photos as well. One of the contributors posted an AOL advertisement with a photo of his. AOL probably paid a buck or two for it--the photographer's cut was likely less than a quarter! I was quite surprised to read that--I would've assumed that a large company like AOL would want something a bit more unique....

So here's the scary data:
http://www.alexa.com/browse/categories?catid=253870
According to alexa.com, traffic-wise, they are rated below Getty (not surprising) and above Corbis (scroll to the bottom right to see the top 5 websites in the business>photography>stock category). Also ranking between these two stock giants is Photos.com, which is a subsription based RF site.
[...]
I'd like to believe that istockphoto and photos.com offers images to an entirely different market than agencies dealing in rights-managed imagery, but if companies like AOL are shopping there, I'm not really sure what to believe.

Readers were reponding:

This is what I call destructive pricing - an entirely different things from the RF model operated by Alamy etc.

and...

What you can believe is that if there are usable photos there, at least some photo users, like AOL, will be all over the new penny photography, especially if there are search methods for cutting through the crap to the photos that will suffice for their jobs (at their now lower photographic standards). They have been primed for it by RF purveyors.

furthermore...

Now I have visited the RF site with that low price and involved on Istockphoto there is a photographer,..., with some very good images and a high technical skill. Looks professional.

and finally...

There are others who do highly marketable stock work. Check out the "most popular files" section, and browse the work of the contributors there. You'll find that some of the photographers do much production work for the bulk of their photos, involving different models, wardrobes, and settings. It seems there are a handful of contributors that specialize in business or lifestyle imagery. Though their work is pretty ordinary, it is high quality stuff that I would consider quite marketable. And many of the better contributors use 6MP dSLRs.
[...]
But those high quality lifestyle shots deserve much more, especially considering that they are all model released!

Believe it or not, this is only the beginning routine. These words are only a cold comfort:

...how many of thesewannabees actually earn a living from photography (probably none), as opposed to how many of them get beer money from their "professional" pictures (at a buck a pop, or less, they better have an even greater output than JG), while in the day to day world they pay their bills by peeling potatoes at McDonald's.

[© Image: Barnes&Noble/Indiana.edu/The Unknown Artist]

Questo blog è chiuso per ferie, fino all' 8 Agosto 2004

[© Grace and Katie]

Chiudo, per un circa settimana, questo weblog. Infatti, a mio modesto parere, per scrivere bisogna prima pensare e, i blogs spesso ti tolgono lo spazio per pensare.


(Hint for the person/CEO/BizDeveloper etc. who is constantly looking for "DigitalVision 2003 revenues", ""Image source" 2003 revenues" or "Index stock imagery 2003 revenues" and other good stuff-- Google hits are a tricky thing, especially with your really nice -- and static -- IP! So, no one has to work for Pixlogic, the company ("Visual Search") with Venture Capital from the CIA, just to know who you are...).
=:-)

Introducing New Categories

Some people have asked if there won´t be a better way to organize all those entries... .
The build-in google search might be nice, but shows often too many hits. On the other hand we wanted to add some new categories since weeks.
So here they are. 19 new categories. Assigning new categories to some hundreds of old posts is a tough (and boring) job, so for a couple of days (weekend) new posts will appear only irregularly.
[© Image creativemac.com]

[Update June 9, 2004: Forget it. There is no way to re-open over 300 posts and reassigning new categories to the old posts. So these new categories only work with future posts or some very important old posts which had been adjusted. Try the Google Search instead. Sorry]

New categories:

Start

Each time you start from scratch.