Today we are announcing new increased per-download royalty payments for our recently released small 10 and 25 download limit monthly subscriptions.

As you are all very aware, iStock by Getty Images has undergone a number of significant changes over the last two years: from launching subscriptions, to radically simplifying our credits offering, along with the various improvements to our site experience along the way. This year, we�ve seen benefits of these changes through new customer growth and more customers downloading more content from us. That said, we remain in an increasingly competitive space with new entrants and a continuous pressure to provide the best kinds of products to the customer.

At the end of August, we began testing a new type of small monthly subscription that we believe can be a powerful new tool to grow our business, attract new customers, and better meet the needs of existing ones. These subscriptions offer customers a small number of downloads per month (10 or 25) at a very attractive price point (starting at $40 for 10 Essentials downloads per month; $99 for Signature). These subscriptions are performing well for us, increasing our new customer conversion and the amount that customers are spending with us. As such, after two months of testing, we now feel confident that these products will be a permanent part of our ongoing product offering and as such, we are announcing a new royalty schedule designed to support their introduction.

These downloads have thus far been generating royalties based on your existing subscription royalty schedule. As such, there has been appropriate discussion and concern about the royalties that are being paid on these new subscriptions. When we began testing them we did so knowing that we would need to make royalty adjustments but due to the limitations of our royalty system, we weren�t able to execute the changes until now.
The new per-download rates for the 10 and 25 download per month subscriptions are:
Non-Exclusive downloads from $0.28 to $1.00
Exclusive Essentials downloads from $0.34 to $1.25
Exclusive Signature downloads from $0.75 to $2.50
Exclusive Signature+ downloads from $2.50 to $3.00

We will also be retroactively applying the new rates, for any image downloaded by the new products since they launched (August 25, 2015), to your accounts by the end of November.

Given the limitations of our current system, these royalties for small subscriptions will show up in your account in 2 separate areas via two different reports: The existing subscription rate that is already reported in your stats area PLUS an admin adjustment (reported in your CSV) equal to the difference between that rate and the new rates. The admin adjustment will be reported around the same time as your current royalties, but provided as a cumulative amount.

That means that, for now, royalties will appear as any other subscription download at the old rates, except with a lump sum adjustment between the new and old rates for any images downloaded by these 10/25 subscriptions. Longer term, we�re working on developing an integrated solution to break out these downloads with more transparency.

Please keep in mind that because we�ve only recently started testing the products � they only represent a very small portion of total subscription downloads, so not many contributors will see any impact to their royalties � yet. Longer-term, however, we do anticipate that these products will play a larger role at iStock and your royalty payments overall.

The rate schedule will be updated in the next couple of weeks to reflect the amounts set out above for subscriptions with 25 or fewer downloads per month, but please consider this your notice regarding these rate increases.

If there are any questions please let us know. Thanks for continuing to be our partners.

It looks like they may have finally reached the point where reducing contributor royalties has had a negative impact on them and are now reversing it. No company would willfully hand that much of their profits out of the kindness of their hearts. I hope this is the start of the turnaround toward more positive things to come. Been waiting a long time.

My only issue is that these are tantamount to credit packs, not subs. Subs would be something like 200 a month, etc.  They just copied deposit photos and are giving us a little more. The real issue is that the industry is redefining the original meaning of subscriptions to mean anything they want.

The cut they still take on any sale, from 80 to 85% (!!!), is too offensive to be accepted. Especially when many agencies live with a 50% commission and they say 80% is unsustainable. Yes, unsustainable for greedy b******s.

Since 17% commission is unsustainable for me too, I hardly can cooperate with them anymore.  So they lost all new material from the past 1 1/2 year, including my new footage.