MicrostockGroup

Just a bit of wild speculation... how long do people think iStock will continue to tolerate exclusives supplying RM to Alamy and other agencies?

Long ago, when we were all new to this game, iStockers vaguely imagined that RM meant the same as editorial. Now we've all grown up, we know that anything can be licensed as RM (subject to the rules).

What's more, iS now has editorial and with the price of Agency and Vetta content - and even standard "exclusive" prices - is now in direct competition with Alamy. On top of which, exclusives now have the Getty channel opwn.

So, how long until Getty wakes up and orders its "exclusives" to get properly "Getty family" exclusive and pull the plug on their Alamy portfolios?

Hi martin!  are you sure about this? because in the RM house-collection, its person exclusivity, Im sure of it and with both Stones and Image-bank, the RM stuff was person exclusivity.

Hi Christian. Perhaps there are different contracts, but my Getty house contract(s) which gives me access to the full spectrum of collections, both RM and RF, is image exclusive (naturally also covering sisters and similars). Did you not sign the new contract? I presume it is the same for everybody, bar Photographer's Choice and Flickr only contracts.

I should have been clearer, I was talking purely about the rules for iStock. I know hardly anything about Getty's various other arrangements. If you recall, it was ruled some time ago that being "exclusive to iStock" meant being "exclusive to the Getty family", hence the reason stuff could appear on TS or in the Getty collections.

Of course, they could change things in any way they like, though I think the "no similars anywhere else" rule would be very difficult for "image exclusive" iStockers to apply to themselves.

It just struck me that it makes no sense for "artist exclusivity" to apply only to RF licensing, when exactly the same subjects can be sold as RM on agencies that have now become direct competitors.

They might as well scrap exclusivity altogether (or go the "image exclusive" route). I had a couple of $6 sales on Alamy last week and $40 or $50 is quite normal, isn't that similar - or below - a lot of price points on iS?

Isn't Getty only image-exclusive for agencies? I'm pretty sure individual artists are artist-exclusive.

Hi Lagereek,
Are you sure about this? At which point in their contract does it say so? I'm in a housecollection and I could only find this:

"All Content submitted to Getty Images is on a Content exclusive basis. This means that Content submitted to Getty Images and any other content that is substantially the same (a “Similar”) may not be licensed to any third party unless Getty Images has notified you that it has been rejected."

That's unless Getty does any art direction or pay for production costs.