MicrostockGroup

just when you think you can't get any more pissed off they go and write some crap like that. There's so much BS and misinformation in that release it's untrue arrrghhhhhhhhhh

That article may calm some clients, but makes me (contributor) even more pissed of! I don't think Getty/IS understands that they can't fight the truth with lies.

Expect update announcement  from IS later today:

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=253252&page=1

What a bunch of drama. And I am willing to bet there are a lot of people anxiously awaiting to hear what the news will be. It doesn't even matter to me what they announce. Trust is gone, their words mean NOTH-ING!

I get the feeling that there isn't going to be any movement on their side at all.
The second statement didn't have any give in it, and I doubt the next one will.

So if it is really true that they can't sustain these levels of commissions, why bother to keep their exclusive program? Isn't it easier to tick off 20% of their contributors rather than 80-100%? Then just raise the prices on all the better selling files or higher canister contributors to exclusive level. And maybe keep an exclusive image program for Vetta. That would allow them to have more higher priced content and everybody would only get 20%. Hell, at that point you could probably bump it up to 1 or 2 percent and still come out ahead.

Maybe not the best solution, but it just seems there could have been so many other solutions that wouldn't make everyone mad.
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I don't believe for a minute it was not sustainable. Imagine how many sales it would take for everyone to make it to platinum. It's just greed plain and simple, they aren't happy with higher profits, they want higher profits in proportion to revenue. It's all total BS that stems from Getty buying the site and wanting a good return on the investment, even if it means squeezing IStock till the pips squeak.

Some one earlier was asking about where to find this. I don't know if anyone posted it yet or not, but if they didn't here it is.  Its the contributor charts at iStock. It will tell you how many of what canister level there is.
http://istockcharts.multimedia.de/

We've got 5531 exclusive contributors in our contributor charts:

base contributors          105 ( 1.9%)
bronze contributors       2417 (43.7%)
silver contributors       1647 (29.8%)
gold contributors          760 (13.7%)
diamond contributors       574 (10.4%)
blackdiamond contributors   28 ( 0.5%)

But I ask again -- how can we trust the accuracy when it shows 105 base level exclusive contributors?

Just a wild guess, but it seems the canisters shown on iStockCharts are determined after the # of downloads. But the # of DL are given by the API in ranges, not exact numbers. Contributors with >200 downloads seem to be at base canister, while contributors with >300 are bronze. Maybe the API doesn't deliver the canister info ?