A Getty Shutterstock merger might get scrutiny from the US government's anti-trust watchdogs.

SS / Getty merger makes little sense to me (but what do I know).  What would be much more logical is Adobe / Alamy merger, or Adobe buying Alamy which has strong Editorial foothold, and this is something Adobe lacks.  Ain't gonna happen but if it would I'd become exclusive. One can always dream.

Re Adobe stock drop: not really surprising. Heavy bet on that abomination they call Firefly had to come back & bite them where sun doesn't shine. I really hope they drop it. Not likely though

I do see the point that together they are a much larger business and can save a lot of costs by combined their teams (and cut down on people).

But who would be running the show???

If it is Getty, then the new company would have good media experience and probably the shutterstock library would get cleaned up drastically to remove undeclared ai.

Getty also has a great editorial team, so they could just take over.

But...if it is the Shutterstock management taking over...then Getty/istock will get run down.

That would then affect a lot of people  still making a full time income with Getty.

If it is a Getty organized buyout, I do see an advantage in a more professionally run Shutterstock and maybe a rise in clients.

I simply cannot imagine that Getty would be sold out to Shutterstock, it would probably then mean the slow death of both agencies.

Perhaps Oringer and partners want to get out.

Sell Shutterstock while the slow death is not so easy to see.

They are already being targeted by short sellers.

eta

After actually reading the links it looks like Getty is in the drivers seat.

SS stock has dropped a lot, it is actually quite clever of Getty to try to take over.

SS looks like a mess with all their mad aquisitions but no rise in sales.

For the istock exclusives this would be very good news. All the customers they could not reach, those clients will now be coming to them.

It will make istock exclusivity more attractive again.

Just to make this clear for our speculation. Getty has 3 times the corporate value of SS, roughly. 3 Billion vs 1 Billion. Getty has double the stock value of SSTK. But Getty has been paying back a large chunk of their profits (which makes them at a loss each year) for old debt. Getty doubled their customer base last year, but is still making less money, because these are the subscription buyers, not the high value, single image customers.

As far as all sources have reported this, Getty is the one proposing the merger. GETY stock jumped up and so did SSTK, based on the proposal of the merger.

I know that first I thought of "merger" I imagined one big agency. But the more I think about it, this could be a corporate merger, which leaves each as a division of the same corporation, operating on their own. No change for us.

I ask myself, do I want 15%, no change, no options, or do I want the essentially meaningless, annual reset and dime downloads. Yippee, I was up to 25 or 30% at SS and still getting 10-12� per download. 15% of a higher number has generally been, more than the measly SS dimes.

If you have Editorial, remember when iStock cut the Editorial News images because it was competition for Getty? They disabled 3,657 of mine, which was most of my IS income. Will Getty ask SS to do that as well?

Every article includes that the market for stock images has been severely devalued by AI, which is cheaper and easier to access.

Seeking Alpha incorrectly says that Getty went public in 2008 - they were bought by Hellman & Friedman in 2008 and taken private.

Getty was brought back on the market through a SPAC, IPO in July 2022. Investors bought in at $10 a share.



"Deliberations are ongoing and Getty could choose not to pursue a deal, the report added." I don't trust much of this as anything but unconfirmed rumors. Maybe a pump and dump.

depends on how this merger is managed,there are many possible scenarios.

however I don't know why every articles say "market for stock images has been severely devalued by AI" because that's simply not the case.

Istock was the first to devalue the market by lowering prices to attract more customers and reducing royalties to 15% a decade before AI,they started playing with the spring,which is a lot of fun,but then this game bounces back in your face! 

the price of digital content to the end customer must rise,the percentages for contributors must increase.

everything is increasing and we have to earn more,simply this.

AI will never be able to replace the work of digital media creators,AI certainly change,AI have changed the scenario,the type of work a lot....but AI will never be able to replace creators in my opinion,at least not in this century I think! 

The people talking about "ai devaluing stock images" have obviously never tried to create something specific with ai.

Once you have wasted an afternoon on trying to create content, you will gladly buy from agencies again.

It simply doesn't work, you need far too many attempts and then you still need to edit in photoshop.

What was bringing prices down is the oversupply and more content being created in countries with lower costs of living.

But that is only true for images.

Why agencies decided to lower the prices for video even though there still is very little content, is something I don't understand.

Making web sizes cheap for social media use, ok, but why bring down the costs of 4k?

They might call it a merger, but the only logical way to go about it is if Getty takes over. They are the people with a solid understanding of the stock market.

Shutterstock used to have that, but they gave it all away 3 years ago.

You're more optimistic than I am.

I have used AI to generate dozens of images that I used for mockups in a regular basis. This is coming from someone who has had a lot of success in microstock, only to see a steadily decline in the last couple years, which coincides with the rise of generative AI.

Images doesn't have to be perfect. It just have to be good enough. A lot of companies cancelled their SS accounts because they no longer need to pay for an expensive subscriptions when they can generate free images every day from certain services.

I've generated some AI podcast via google in german (sorry guys!) from the reuters and bloomberg news:
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/f38ddd09-762d-4a21-9543-6f68f9f98bbe/audio

Thank's god we have gemini.

Why agencies decided to lower the prices for video even though there still is very little content, is something I don't understand.

Making web sizes cheap for social media use, ok, but why bring down the costs of 4k?

I believe this trend has been largely driven by competition from agencies like Artlist and Storyblocks, which offer unlimited downloads through annual subscription plans. In free-market economies, prices for goods and services are fundamentally influenced by competition, supply, and demand�core principles of basic economics.

Here's a timeline of major mergers and acquisitions since 2009 that I put together.

Have I overlooked any other ones?

Source: https://brutallyhonestmicrostock.com/2025/01/04/breaking-news-getty-images-and-shutterstock-discuss-potential-merger/

I thought about putting another column on "Has it benefited contributors", but it's very difficult to know for sure...except for perhaps the SS acquiring Pond5 one.

Updated chart, thanks Jo Ann for inputs.

Also, SS bought Turbosquid in January 2021 https://blog.turbosquid.com/2021/01/26/shutterstock-to-acquire-turbosquid-the-worlds-largest-3d-marketplace/

exactly,I also started late in 2018,30k files that had 20 years to mature,with countless many more interactions,by now it would have been very different!

I believe that Adobe is different from other agencies,because from what I see the way in which customer requests are managed and therefore sales works differently.

if this were not the case,it would not be possible to earn more already!

the total search for content on Adobe Stock right now reports 624 million,which is at least double of when contributors started to see a decrease in sales at other agencies.

that is,how is it possible that with 624 million content in December I made 73,5% more sales and 52,2% more earnings?

this wouldn't be possible in a "random way" with the amount of content there is on Adobe today.

and then I really don't think that a company like Adobe hasn't thought about the consequences of starting to accept AI content.

what do you think they did? they said: "but yes,let's start accepting millions of contents a week,then we'll see what happens and hope for the best!" 

but of course not!Adobe certainly made a long-term projection and evaluated all the consequences of this choice.

this is why in my opinion it won't matter at all on Adobe whether there will be billions of contents in the future or not,because everything has simply already been thought out down to the smallest detail,and in fact you can already see it now.


and sorry if I derailed maybe too much from the main topic...my fault sorry! 

Quote from: Pacesetter on January 04, 2025, 19:07

Should this proceed, it would appear the microstock industry battle lines are being drawn up into two with one being the conglomerate of iStock / Shutterstock and all its marketplaces and the other Adobe Stock.

I'm not a trader so have little understanding of it but wondering why Shutterstock would want to do this merger with iStock when they would be merging with a company that has a lot lower share price (currently GETY at $2.39 and SSTK at $31.47)?

For starters Getty has over 78 million share and SSTK as 35 million shares thus double the amount of SS.

Yes, and I wrote "Getty has 3 times the corporate value of SS, roughly. 3 Billion vs 1 Billion. Getty has double the stock value of SSTK. " That's why.

I don't really want to see the merger and I don't know if SSTK actually wants to merge, but it's the natural progression of a boom market. Many companies enter, they take profits, then there's a sorting out as the small ones get bought up or go out of business. There usually end up being 2 or 3 major providers that end up on top and some smaller ones that have specialized markets that survive in their own area.

I think of the computer games business when home computers and PCs first became popular. Companies founded on one product or a line of similar games. The single game companies, got bought out and merged into the big ones, or the smaller companies, disappeared. Look at who's left, and makes games and entertainment for Xbox and the rest of the consoles.

Here's something about Microstock. Pretty much all the same images, from all the same artists and sources are available on all the major agency sites. There's no reason, except price, for buyers to go to more than one place. If the agency they use, has the types of images that they use, that's the one they will buy from. The second reason might be choice, and who has the most images. Small agencies, have neither, in most instances. The small agencies can't survive against the big agency competition, that exists on volume with a smaller profit margin.

I still don't understand how so many small agencies are still in business. My only explanation is, they are paying artists so little, that there's still enough money to run the agency. Once there's not enough profit and the expenses exceed the income, they will disappear in a blink.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on January 05, 2025, 19:36

Here's something about Microstock. Pretty much all the same images, from all the same artists and sources are available on all the major agency sites.

Exactly right.  This is one of several reasons why this merger doesn't make sense.  But if happens, there are some interesting implications for contributor ports.  Simple merge would not work because of duplicates.  What takes precedence?  Then, what would be front end facing contributors?   Shutterstock is better by wide margin;  but if Getty drives the merger they'd probably want to keep their model - once a month reporting ?  Managed Vocabulary ? Etc.

I am quite certain merger will not happen.  But it provides entertainment on Forums like this one.

Corporate merger doesn't mean a website merger.

And what of iStock Exclusives?

In theory, they could sell exclusive files on iStock, and all the rest on SS.
In practice, who knows? I've never been able to second-guess what Getty might do next.

Both Getty and shutterstock operate several agencies and offer many different license and price types.

I don�t think they need to merge it all into one site.

I think they both offer all content from all their agencies internally.

They must have a system to deal with duplicates for that.

Both customer groups, i.e. those with a contract from one of the SS companies or those with a contract to one of the Getty companies will have the opportunity to access millions of new fresh files.

Getty has a huge exclusive collection and Shutterstock has loads of content istock does not have because many producers don�t upload there.

And for the istock exclusives and also those with a getty house contract that will mean loads of fresh new customers.

The complicated and different upload systems will probably stay for quite a while.

Even SS hasn�t integrated ss p5 envato etc into one system.

Nothing good for us will came from this merge

Not just lower commissions, but they'll probably reject more submissions as well.

What makes you think that?  Not saying you are wrong, just curious.

- What exactly happened with that merger?

For us: they took 25% of the money of non-exclusives, 33% of the money of exclusives

This is a little bit going off on a tangent sorry, but as I am a fractal artist I was interested to see a fractal used in the official Shutterstock PDF for investors. https://investor.shutterstock.com/static-files/de522e71-d1ac-4861-9427-49719876344b (the full page background for the Appendix slide). They appeared to have got the file number and artist credit wrong (!) but I managed to find the image at https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/conceptual-illustration-black-holes-merging-space-2099127601 and was amused that its description is "black holes merging". Maybe some of us can related to the black hole analogy, lol.

My sales on iStock have doubled since this merger was announced, and I haven't had a download on SS since the first news of the merger.

My sales on iStock have doubled since this merger was announced, and I haven't had a download on SS since the first news of the merger.

I don't think it's related, might be just a coincidence.  Mine are exactly the same

It's a corporate merger not a content merger

As I mentioned privately I can't see benefit coming out of this.  Content merger, in some shape or form, has to happen in order for this to make sense.  Yes there are variations (iStock exclusives on Getty, rest on SS,  etc etc) - but I tend to believe there will be some sort of 3rd, unified content platform.  Naturally, this is not easy to implement (duplicates, crappy AI, list goes on).  But this must have been discussed already.   IT guys are probably hard on it as we speak.

Rest I agree with.  They don't care about contributors, and why should they?  It is about business and profit, anyone that believes otherwise is simply living in different dimension.
This merger was likely triggered in large part by Adobe rise as it took large share of the Market, and this is the response.  If nothing, it should be interesting.

Here's an update that I've just published on the Brutally Honest Blog, including a corporate crap rating from all the announcements, brought by AI.

https://brutallyhonestmicrostock.com/2025/01/11/getty-and-shutterstock-merger-what-it-means-for-contributors/

The end of the race to the bottom. Both collections will support each other and attract buyers, at higher Getty prices. This merger is going to be good for Microstock artists.

Let's hope so. The "race to the bottom" has gotten everyone (contributors and agencies) in trouble.

If the merger goes as planned, GETY / SSTK will have 70% of the photo market. Because of the archives and the collections, they will also control some specific images. If they are the biggest and most complete agency, combined, they can also control the prices for their images.

Canva can't offer those images, and the free sites can't either. Some of Adobes images, might be unique as artists have stopped supplying IS and SS.

Interesting post by someone who knows:  https://petapixel.com/2025/01/12/stock-photographys-crossroads-can-a-getty-shutterstock-merger-fix-it/

AI: The Elephant in the Room
"To stay relevant, Getty/Shutterstock must find ways to better integrate AI capabilities into their platforms."

"70% of the photo market" Where did you get that number from? Plugged it out of thin air?

And Canva already has all Getty images!

Quote from: Uncle Pete on January 16, 2025, 12:55

If the merger goes as planned, GETY / SSTK will have 70% of the photo market. Because of the archives and the collections, they will also control some specific images. If they are the biggest and most complete agency, combined, they can also control the prices for their images.

Canva can't offer those images, and the free sites can't either. Some of Adobes images, might be unique as artists have stopped supplying IS and SS.

Interesting post by someone who knows:  https://petapixel.com/2025/01/12/stock-photographys-crossroads-can-a-getty-shutterstock-merger-fix-it/

AI: The Elephant in the Room
"To stay relevant, Getty/Shutterstock must find ways to better integrate AI capabilities into their platforms."

"70% of the photo market" Where did you get that number from? Plugged it out of thin air?

And Canva already has all Getty images!

Read the Blog post, I plucked it from there, and it was written by someone closer to the business and probably smarter than everyone in the forum, when it comes to understanding Microstock. I know he's way smarter than I'll ever be.

"This merger isn�t about ambition; it�s about survival. Together, Getty and Shutterstock will control an estimated 50-70% of the creative licensing market, but their challenges remain daunting."

" An Oligopoly Cemented

The stock photography market has long been an oligopoly, and the merger of Getty Images and Shutterstock will only solidify this. The key players remain:

    Getty Images/Shutterstock (Merged Entity): Combining vast content libraries and operational scale.
    Adobe Stock: Leveraging the Creative Cloud ecosystem for consistent growth.
    Canva: While not a traditional competitor, its rise among casual users and SMBs impacts the lower end of the market."

I think he's right:

" What They Gain:

    Market Power: Greater leverage with AI companies for licensing deals.
    Cost Synergies: Potential operational efficiencies.
    Pricing Control: Ability to stabilize or even raise nano-stock pricing.

What They Risk:

    Debt Overhang: Both companies bring significant financial baggage.
    Contributor Backlash: Lower royalties and exclusivity demands could alienate creators.
    Innovation Stagnation: Focus on integration may delay much-needed transformation."

I wouldn't classify this as an oligopoly, considering there are other agencies with a growing selection, such as Storyblocks and Artlist. Although they may not provide the same range of choices, they still compete.