Are you all seeing this offer when you click an image on Alamy:

"Save up to 30% with our image packs
Pre-pay for multiple images and download on demand."

Who needs 25 images for "personal use"?

https://www.alamy.com/image-packs.aspx

Microstock.

Every day good news.

Alamy is being relegated from Midstock to Microstock

They've already come out in video stating that they cannot compete with micro stock and have to move elements of their business in that direction.  It should be no surprise to anyone who is in this business and follows it.

I wonder what the image packs mean for contributors regarding payment - if the buyer has to pay up front, surely we have to be paid at time of download versus 2 - 6 months in arrears?

I looked in the Alamy forums and the discussion about these image packs didn't talk about that aspect of the new payment type (that I could find).

There is no mention of image packs within the contributor contract - https://www.alamy.com/terms/contributor.aspx

 Seems to be business as usual:

"�Cleared Funds�
Alamy operates a real-time reporting system, where sales are reported in the Contributor's account at the point at which a client purchases on credit card, or when an invoice is raised to a client purchasing on a finance account.

Sales are posted to Contributors' accounts immediately and are listed as �uncleared�. They will not clear for at least 45 days from the sale date.

Credit card sales will automatically be deemed cleared on day 45 as long as the transaction has not been returned as fraudulent, is not suspected of being fraudulent by Alamy or is in dispute. Sales on account will be deemed cleared on day 45 if we have received payment from the Customer. Otherwise the sale will be deemed cleared as soon thereafter as we have received payment and allocated it to the Contributor's account. �Cleared Funds� means amounts which are deemed cleared in accordance with the above process."

Therefore, if a client pre-pays it should show up relatively quickly within the dashboard, sort of how it already works within microstock. In a way this is good news for contributors with less likely (or even permitted) to have refunds.

If they're going to operate like a microstock agency, they need to pay up like a microstock agency.

Exactly.

Also, in terms of content, Alamy is not the typical microstock agency. I don't think it's right that Rights Managed content is lumped together with Royalty Free and offered in packages. If the package deal was offered for Royalty Free only, I'd probably see much less problem with it.
Alamy is already offering "hybrid" licensing for RM content.. recently had one of my RM-Alamy exclusive images sold as "in perpetuity, web&apps, any size, 3.00 USD". Not motivating any more to put premium content exclusively on Alamy, as it's distributed the same way as microstock. From Alamy, is this a smart move?

Yes, the image packs should be mentioned in the contributor contract. Very strange indeed that the image packs were introduced without informing us.