With the recent turmoil revolving around DPC and the recent changes on fotolia subscription royalty payments I think it's time to talk about what a subscription is.

Agencies usually pay a flat rate to the contributor when an image is purchased through a subscription. Fotolia recently modified it and now pays a % of the image price and has a flat rate bottom to this % so that it doesn't go below the previous rate but up until now they paid a flat rate regardless of the price of the image to the buyer.

Fotolia and depositphotos are the major players in this game of confusing the contributors with misleading names and trying to turn everything into a subscription. Don't know about others.

Fotolia: 5 image/month - 1 month duration = 25 EUR = 5 EUR / image
depositphotos: 5 image/month - 1 month duration = 37 EUR = 7.44 EUR / image

And they consider this a subscription and pay subscription amounts (fotolia just changed this days ago).

Is this really a subscription?
What is a subscription?
What is a 5 image/month subscription for a single month? Is it really a subscription when it is a one time purchase that does not involve more recurrent payments?
What is next? A 1 image/month subscription for 1 month?

IMHO they are cheating the contributors when they create single month subscription plans that are equal to on demand plans or any one time image packs.