As more and more contributors join the ranks of the thousands of others already producing stock footage, prices will inevitably drop. I personally feel we�re beginning to witness prices slowly starting to creep in the downward direction. Please, Dissolve, don�t help escalate this process.

I'm not sure why individual pricing set by the contributor isn't allowed.

It seems a lot of people missed the message between the lines...

Shutterstock and other sites continue to successfully sell at higher prices because they provide a superior product.  Dissolve cannot provide a similarly superior product experience for buyers, therefore they are going down the discount pricing street.

How do you define inferior product?You mean contributors uploading their "b-rated" stuff because they are feeding their good stuff to other agencies?Or perhaps that dissolve offers lower quality service to buyers?No i dont think so,it seems they have been treating their buyers better than anyone by making further discounts,offering unwatermarked clips from them to "test" and who knows what else.
Perhaps what you say is true but even those who have uploaded "test" clips do report constant growth of sales including me,at a level that i didnt think possible.My view is that dissolve has been growing continuously (have hinted off record,at least thats what i made out of it) and their collection and quality of clips is growing.
So if what you say doesnt apply?
What then?

Here's what I see from my vantage point...

I had the opportunity to speak with them at NAB this year and they talked a big game and made all kinds of "promises".  They "sounded" like they had their act together.  But clearly, from this move, they do not.

A lot of agencies have sprouted offering all kinds of promises and then going back on those promises when they felt the need.  And most of those agencies are gone now.  This type of move by Dissolve signals that path for their business.  They are starting to discount clips to build a lot of cash for when they shut down.

I expect them to completely deny it, and they may even be just making a bad business decision that they'll realize at some point and fix.  But this move clearly is a major erosion of TRUST between contributors and Dissolve.  It leads me to believe that they do not have a solid business plan and are reacting when they should be WORKING to improve their site, which they clearly HAVE NOT done.

Pond5 and Shutterstock are the biggest sellers for most producers because they don't (or very rarely) screw over the people who feed them content.  You can see sites like iStock going downhill because of crap like this that they've pulled.  Is THAT REALLY the model Dissolve wants to follow?

I think the folks at Dissolve need to read this, print it out, paste it on the foreheads of every owner and employee at their office, have someone scribble it on the urinal walls, print it on the office coffee mugs.

Really, no one, except maybe someone's sister-in-law is going to go exclusive with a startup that flinches.

In an earlier thread George Georgeadis from Dissolve stated:

Hello from Dissolve!

My name is George Georgeadis and I am a filmmaker/storyteller and the product manager here at Dissolve. I work directly with our contributors and I am beyond excited to introduce myself and Dissolve to you.

Dissolve is a new stock footage website by some of the founders and original creative minds behind Veer and iStock. We are 100% focused on selling footage and specializing in supporting the unique needs of footage buyers around the world.

We are looking to work with contributors that are as passionate about stock footage as we are. We believe that footage is at the heart of great storytelling and we are inspired by the work of this creative community.

I am not only a part the Dissolve team, but also a filmmaker and an exclusive stock producer for Dissolve, so I would like to encourage you to ask me any questions you have about Dissolve, about shooting footage, how to become a part of the Dissolve family or anything else you want to know.

We are happy to be on MicrostockGroup to start a dialogue about all things stock footage, and to invite you to become a contributor. Looking forward to meeting you all!

Somewhere along the line that contributor respect has been either forgotten or didn't exist in the first place.

This new policy has not been thought through. Each time we change a price on P5 we must email Dissolve and tell them - Are they serious?

And who is signing up anywhere these days exclusively? WOW talk about putting all your eggs in one small basket.
It has to be people that are new to this business.

I have about 1300 uploaded out of my 5400 clip portfolio. Glad this happened now instead of when I had all of them uploaded.

They're obviously obsessed with their own self importance. Telling us to contact them whenever we make a price change elsewhere. The sheer arrogance is astounding.

Quote from: Daisy on August 01, 2015, 10:30

They're obviously obsessed with their own self importance. Telling us to contact them whenever we make a price change elsewhere. The sheer arrogance is astounding.

I guess the question then is, if I decide to increase the asking price at P5 to something like $150 or $ 350 for a series of clips, will Dissolve follow? It has to work both ways.

If you dont contibute to ss, or anywhere else, then they should.Which makes this "matching prices argument" so hypocritical,because who contributes only to dissolve and not at least to ss and p5,not to mention all the rest?
But the thing is this.Even if there are people out there who fulfill the requirements,how absurd is it to force non-exclusives to promise that they will -as long as they contribute at dissolve- keep their prices exactly the same everywhere?
Impossible not to mention out of context.
Does dissolve even realize that they weren't the ones who invented microstock?

So lets imagine this for example.

Let's suppose that Aaron or any dissolve representative came out 2 days ago speaking like a person and not like a robot from the 90's and announced the following (which belongs in the sphere of imagination,but just for the sake of argument)

Dear dissolve contributors,lovers,brothers,lurkers,and casual bystanders.We have realized that we have to compete in price because..yada yada,corporate greed 101...yada yada...marketing 101 etc,that we need to price hd at 59usd for all non-exclusive portfolios because of all the aforementioned yada's.But at the same time we will raise hd commission at 40% so that our beloved contributors will earn the same royalties as before.
We will also run bulk discounts shutterstock style whenever necessary (big clients,corporations etc) but we will maintain the 40% commission for you like pond5 does in discounts (and ss doesnt).
We will also implement a true contributor console where you can not only do whatever everyone else is also capable of doing in most of the other agencies but send us feedback on uploads and help us communicate so that we can fix curation and other mistakes fast and efficiently etc etc.

Would it be so difficult for them to go that route?
Would it be cost prohibitive?
Would they lose contributors?
Would they grow as an agency?
Would they set a paradigm that would make people forget about all the others and focus on them?
Would it.......(fill in the blanks)

Then why?
Because the "markets" i guess.
Well, there you go.

So lets imagine this for example.

Let's suppose that Aaron or any dissolve representative came out 2 days ago speaking like a person and not like a robot from the 90's and announced the following (which belongs in the sphere of imagination,but just for the sake of argument)

Dear dissolve contributors,lovers,brothers,lurkers,and casual bystanders.We have realized that we have to compete in price because..yada yada,corporate greed 101...yada yada...marketing 101 etc,that we need to price hd at 59usd for all non-exclusive portfolios because of all the aforementioned yada's.But at the same time we will raise hd commission at 40% so that our beloved contributors will earn the same royalties as before.
We will also run bulk discounts shutterstock style whenever necessary (big clients,corporations etc) but we will maintain the 40% commission for you like pond5 does in discounts (and ss doesn't).
We will also implement a true contributor console where you can not only do whatever everyone else is also capable of doing in most of the other agencies but send us feedback on uploads and help us communicate so that we can fix curation and other mistakes fast and efficiently etc etc.

Would it be so difficult for them to go that route?
Would it be cost prohibitive?
Would they lose contributors?
Would they grow as an agency?
Would they set a paradigm that would make people forget about all the others and focus on them?
Would it.......(fill in the blanks)

Then why?
Because the "markets" i guess.
Well, there you go.

Nicely said

Quote from: gcrook on August 01, 2015, 12:39

So lets imagine this for example.

Let's suppose that Aaron or any dissolve representative came out 2 days ago speaking like a person and not like a robot from the 90's and announced the following (which belongs in the sphere of imagination,but just for the sake of argument)

Dear dissolve contributors,lovers,brothers,lurkers,and casual bystanders.We have realized that we have to compete in price because..yada yada,corporate greed 101...yada yada...marketing 101 etc,that we need to price hd at 59usd for all non-exclusive portfolios because of all the aforementioned yada's.But at the same time we will raise hd commission at 40% so that our beloved contributors will earn the same royalties as before.
We will also run bulk discounts shutterstock style whenever necessary (big clients,corporations etc) but we will maintain the 40% commission for you like pond5 does in discounts (and ss doesnt).
We will also implement a true contributor console where you can not only do whatever everyone else is also capable of doing in most of the other agencies but send us feedback on uploads and help us communicate so that we can fix curation and other mistakes fast and efficiently etc etc.

Would it be so difficult for them to go that route?
Would it be cost prohibitive?
Would they lose contributors?
Would they grow as an agency?
Would they set a paradigm that would make people forget about all the others and focus on them?
Would it.......(fill in the blanks)

Then why?
Because the "markets" i guess.
Well, there you go.

Even in this scenario I wouldn't license my footage through them. In the market at the moment we have 3 main agencies - SS, P5 and iStock/Getty. VideoBlocks seems to be the up-and-coming agency with a unique model.

Many non-exclusives tolerate selling at 30% through SS because the return to them for most sales is somewhere in the order of $20-25 with some sales for significantly more. They don't particularly like the 30%, but the sheer volume of buyers makes it a hard place not to sell for non-exclusives. On top of that SS have a track record of consistency.

While there's some negative posters lately here making noise about Pond5, they're generally accepted as a very good agency for video sales. The ability to set your own prices and a 50% royalty is pretty unique in the industry, as is the practice of offering periodically discounts to customers without cutting into the contributors share of the price. They're also probably the only agency that has bought another microstock and increased that agency's royalties to 50%.

Videoblocks seems to be getting a lot of attention lately, and is almost certainly the reason for this change - the $49 price point is no co-incidence. From a contributor perspective though its a model that has potential to be very lucrative. Its early days though and they may end up also being one of the many agencies that don't succeed in this business. What will obviously concern Dissolve is that VideoBlocks is attracting new contributors at a much faster rate than they are. From my searches, it looks like they already have more 4K footage than Dissolve in a much shorter space of time.

Its worth re-reading what Dissolve posted just over 12 months ago about commissions (and the response): http://www.microstockgroup.com/dissolve/introducing-dissolve/msg386463/#msg386463

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on July 04, 2014, 17:53

"When a contributor signs with Dissolve, their royalties are set for the duration of the contract. So, no need to fear of rates reducing after you�ve signed on."

Where there's a will, there's a way.

Didn't take long did it?

Yes you are correct.
I never had the illusion that this scenario would make them top agency in this business,or "change the world" if you may.
It would still consider this  borderline theft,but for most it would be more than acceptable and rightly so.

But what this scenario would do,and thats where i think that you underestimate the context of such an announcement, is it would make every other agency who always tights the screws on their contributors but not on themselves (quite the opposite in fact) look like complete and utter clowns.
You would have a representative speaking in public like a person for once and not like a robot,and you would show in practice that you understand the prevailing notion that is apparent today
which is described along the lines of "what a load of bullcrap another agency screwing us over spouting pretentious stuff about markets and economies etc"
I find great power in examples like these even if it's a lesser evil in a sense.
I dont dream of a utopic world,but dissipating the illusion of hard pragmatism in public is a hobby of mine that i like to practice.

EDIT:You mentioned videoblocks.If thy succeed it will be for one and only reason.Because as long as they keep this model they will have people backing them up no matter what.Everyone i know uploaded FULL PORTS there not even test clips,and we are talking about an agency that noone knows exactly what it is and where it came from.Dissolve has been around for 2 years and we know that they make sales, and people still test clips there (well after all this noone will propably upload anything anymore).Do you see what i mean?There is power in that having the people by your side.Look at this thread.Dissolve became the "Darth vader" of stock overnight to the point that people started cheering in this thread for videoblocks.Needless to say im uploading everything there despite my concerns.Dissolve should pay attention to this paradigm although it might be too late for them now.