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Author Topic: Getty says "Don't buy at istock"  (Read 32210 times)

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ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #50 on: March 20, 2010, 10:43 »
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In that scenario, I guess everything would hinge on how many of the Big Sellers 'pulled' their images from iStock in protest.
They don't have to pull their images. They just don't have to opt in the PP.
That was creative cutting.
The scenario I was referring to was the suggestion that Getty might not make 'opting out' of the PP an option for iStock contributers.


lisafx

« Reply #51 on: March 20, 2010, 10:55 »
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The scenario I was referring to was the suggestion that Getty might not make 'opting out' of the PP an option for iStock contributers.

My guess, and it's only that, would be that one of the "exclusive benefits" will eventually be the ability to opt out of the PP.  I suspect non-exclusives will one day be herded into it whether they like it or not. 

« Reply #52 on: March 20, 2010, 11:05 »
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just slightly off topic, but still related to IS...

a moment ago, when i go to my link for IS , and click on VIEW PORTFOLIO...
i get an error message.

is anyone getting the same thing when they go to their own
http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id .....
link to click on VIEW PORTFOLIO.

i am thinking that maybe IS has changed the portfolio link, like Fotolia did last year to our link.

« Reply #53 on: March 20, 2010, 11:29 »
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My guess, and it's only that, would be that one of the "exclusive benefits" will eventually be the ability to opt out of the PP.  I suspect non-exclusives will one day be herded into it whether they like it or not. 
In that case I'm gone. They won't make it mandatory, they will just kick you back some pages down the Worst Match.

« Reply #54 on: March 20, 2010, 12:39 »
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*snip*

Most people upload to ThinkStock because they want to make more money. (One would think an exclusive Black Diamond is past such worries. But no.) The further down Getty's road they go chasing, the less we're all going to get.
Let's keep those upload limits in place for as long as possible.

Just wondering if we're absolutely sure those black diamonds all opted in... i still read posts in the istock forums from people being outraged because they opted out and their images are STILL there?

Apart from this... i agree with istock being sacrificed for the "Greater Getty Good" as someone stated earlier; it becomes painfully obvious with every new move. And btw, isn't this very typical?! The bomb gets dropped right before the weekend again...
« Last Edit: March 20, 2010, 12:42 by Artemis »

RacePhoto

« Reply #55 on: March 20, 2010, 13:42 »
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Geez, people, don't be so knee-jerkish: They're not dissuading regular buyers from using iStock, they're merely pointing subscription buyers towards Thinkstock, which makes this largely irrelevant: the number of subscription sales at iStock is minimal at very best.


Here's the page people get when they click on Subscriptions for photos. I don't see where it says "don't buy from iStock"?

What I see are two choices?

http://www.istockphoto.com/istock_thinkstock_subscription.php

Says this under Thinkstock, with a bunch more: Stop comparison-shopping at different subscription sites. If budget is your main concern and you don't need video or audio options, Thinkstock is for you.

Under the iStock subscription link it says: An iStock subscription gives you access to our entire collection: photographs, vectors, Flash media, video footage and audio tracks. You'll get the newest files from our Exclusive artists, and the exceptional quality of the Vetta collection

Of course as someone who's non-exclusive, opted in for the PP I'll like this better than an exclusive who is opted out. I can understand that difference.

KB

« Reply #56 on: March 20, 2010, 13:58 »
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Geez, people, don't be so knee-jerkish: They're not dissuading regular buyers from using iStock
Here's the page people get when they click on Subscriptions for photos. I don't see where it says "don't buy from iStock"?

Clearly I titled the thread for maximum exposure. But what I wrote in the first post was this:
2. Getty is now advertising on iStock's website (subscription page), urging potential (and no doubt current) buyers to consider ThinkStock:
I did not say they were advertising "don't buy from iStock" on iStock itself.

The "don't buy from iStock" quote comes from the first thread I linked to:
When I said that we buy our images from Istockphoto, she said some thing like "Yeah, but if you buy a lot of images for your project, you should consider ThinkStock also!

True, the exact words were not "don't buy from iStock". But the meaning, to me, was exactly that.

I'm an independent who is opted out of the PP, so, yeah, I like this a whole lot less than someone opted in. IMO, you shouldn't be giving away your images for $0.25. It isn't worth it, and it can definitely lead to a lowering of commissions across the board. But that's JMO; we'll have to wait a year or two to see how it actually all plays out.

alias

« Reply #57 on: March 21, 2010, 05:50 »
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I'd be absolutely gutted about these latest developments if I were exclusive. It seems that Istock's real message is "You play ball with us ... and we'll shove the bat up your arse".

Seems to me they are offering the opportunity to grow sales in a different space.

Very regular users need cheap content. Consider that many of the biggest sites are using free and or CC images. Cheap subs are competing with free content. The ad yields are much lower per page vs print and the pages have a much shorter life than the old static webpages.

Cheap content has the potential to create a demand for cheap content and to therefore increase volumes. A designer choosing images to use in a specific project with a relatively longer shelf life is a different market from an editor looking for something to illustrate a blog post. The only thing they have in common is a need for images but they come to that completely differently.

I totally get the point of having competing and cross promotional brands under one family with different prices. When someone does a search at Google you want as many as possible of the sites to be selling your content differently. Just like independents always argued.
« Last Edit: March 21, 2010, 05:52 by alias »

« Reply #58 on: March 21, 2010, 07:31 »
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Just because someone -wants- cheap content because their business model or hobby doesn't have enough cash, doesn't mean you have to guve them the same content for cheap that dies sell for acceptable pricing.  An entitlement attitude does not need to be satisfied.  Unless you can offer special licensing, like $250 a month, 250 images, usage period one month for non-advertising purposes.

alias

« Reply #59 on: March 21, 2010, 08:45 »
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Just because someone -wants- cheap content because their business model or hobby doesn't have enough cash, doesn't mean you have to guve them the same content for cheap that dies sell for acceptable pricing.  An entitlement attitude does not need to be satisfied.  Unless you can offer special licensing, like $250 a month, 250 images, usage period one month for non-advertising purposes.

Not about hobby sites or poor business models. About publishing pages and blog posts which have a shorter shelf life and therefore generate less potential ad revenue than more static web pages or magazines.

That is a new market. Different enough from the web which has previously been served by stock and microstock to potentially justify different price models. It's a different web as print dies. Different opportunities. And you would be potentially competing with CC and or free.

Obviously you can either decide to try to serve that different market of not. Other markets exist along side it.

You could argue for restrictions but restrictions tend to put off customers. They tend to want the potential for flexibility even if they don't use it. But I think the new sub buyers are mostly going to be a different set from the people who carefully choose a few images at a time.
« Last Edit: March 21, 2010, 08:47 by alias »

« Reply #60 on: March 21, 2010, 09:30 »
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If it has different needs, serve a different license then.  No need to give the farm for nearly free.

« Reply #61 on: March 21, 2010, 09:53 »
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Just because someone -wants- cheap content because their business model or hobby doesn't have enough cash, doesn't mean you have to guve them the same content for cheap that dies sell for acceptable pricing.  An entitlement attitude does not need to be satisfied.  Unless you can offer special licensing, like $250 a month, 250 images, usage period one month for non-advertising purposes.

so true. you're a fine spokeman and a strong voice against giving away the store if ever we need one to represent that school, Mr Locke!

the problem with the officials of the microstock sites is that , to quote a previous prime minister of canada, they "speak from both sides of the mouth".
on one hand, they preach in secret that they really do not approve or like the idea of subs,
but in public they say you have to do it, or as Gostwyck puts it so succinctly, "we'll shove the bats up..."

it's not playing well with the contributors. every day it seems to get worse. at least IS gives you the option to opt out, while some sites , eg. DT , does not give you that luxury.
and the consensus seem to want to see the bottom fall out. even though the consensus on the contributor side
(including Mr. Locke, thank goodness), is openly against the idea of giving away your fine work.

so where is this going?  is it time again for another lube up the rear end for us?
« Last Edit: March 21, 2010, 09:56 by PERSEUS »

« Reply #62 on: March 21, 2010, 10:09 »
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I'd be absolutely gutted about these latest developments if I were exclusive. It seems that Istock's real message is "You play ball with us ... and we'll shove the bat up your arse".

Seems to me they are offering the opportunity to grow sales in a different space.

Very regular users need cheap content. Consider that many of the biggest sites are using free and or CC images. Cheap subs are competing with free content. The ad yields are much lower per page vs print and the pages have a much shorter life than the old static webpages.

Cheap content has the potential to create a demand for cheap content and to therefore increase volumes. A designer choosing images to use in a specific project with a relatively longer shelf life is a different market from an editor looking for something to illustrate a blog post. The only thing they have in common is a need for images but they come to that completely differently.

I totally get the point of having competing and cross promotional brands under one family with different prices. When someone does a search at Google you want as many as possible of the sites to be selling your content differently. Just like independents always argued.

I would think that people requiring cheap images would use the free sites etc or when they have to buy individual images from the cheapest sites, I would doubt if many would buy $250 / month subs plans. 

« Reply #63 on: March 21, 2010, 10:27 »
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It's the classic strategy for dealing with a threat of competitive innovation, as revealed in a now-infamous internal email from Microsoft: "embrace, extend, extinguish".  

Getty loves microstock, buys into it - expands it, introduces new subscription plans - drives the price to the floor - floods buyers' searches with cheap, low-quality, repititious images - until contributors can no longer recover their costs and stop submitting new work, and buyers burn out.  Eventually, in the words of Yogi Berra - "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded".  

When the time is right, Getty will introduce a revolutionary "new" way to buy stock images, which will be a lot more expensive, and a lot more exclusive, and end up feeling a lot like the past.

Consider the online music business.  The big labels, with their army of lawyers, moved in and first shut down Napster, then (essentially) acquired it, carefully setting it up as a failure;   the cheap subscription model was tried by eMusic and others, but failed due to perceived lack of quality material.  So today, we pay - at iTunes or Amazon - almost as much for a dowloaded album  as we originally paid for a CD in the days before the internet.
« Last Edit: March 21, 2010, 10:31 by stockastic »

« Reply #64 on: March 21, 2010, 10:48 »
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Just because someone -wants- cheap content because their business model or hobby doesn't have enough cash, doesn't mean you have to guve them the same content for cheap that dies sell for acceptable pricing.  An entitlement attitude does not need to be satisfied.  Unless you can offer special licensing, like $250 a month, 250 images, usage period one month for non-advertising purposes.

Not about hobby sites or poor business models. About publishing pages and blog posts which have a shorter shelf life and therefore generate less potential ad revenue than more static web pages or magazines.

That is a new market. Different enough from the web which has previously been served by stock and microstock to potentially justify different price models. It's a different web as print dies. Different opportunities. And you would be potentially competing with CC and or free.

Obviously you can either decide to try to serve that different market of not. Other markets exist along side it.

You could argue for restrictions but restrictions tend to put off customers. They tend to want the potential for flexibility even if they don't use it. But I think the new sub buyers are mostly going to be a different set from the people who carefully choose a few images at a time.

Hello???? Blog sized images cost $1 at pretty much every micro site. How much cheaper does it need to be??????

« Reply #65 on: March 21, 2010, 10:59 »
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Just because someone -wants- cheap content because their business model or hobby doesn't have enough cash, doesn't mean you have to guve them the same content for cheap that dies sell for acceptable pricing.  An entitlement attitude does not need to be satisfied.  Unless you can offer special licensing, like $250 a month, 250 images, usage period one month for non-advertising purposes.

So so true Mr. Locke, so so true. Even the conditions you consider do not need to be offered.

« Reply #66 on: March 21, 2010, 11:20 »
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Very regular users need cheap content.
I need a Cessna since I'm tired of all this local transport here at 25km/h over mud roads. I really honestly do need it. And I need it very cheaply, let's say for 8 DT credits. Got the point? A regular user can ask what he wants, but nobody is forced to offer or to produce it for the price that user wants to or can spend. If the images are too expensive, he can always go out and shoot them himself.

« Reply #67 on: March 21, 2010, 11:38 »
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It's the classic strategy for dealing with a threat of competitive innovation, as revealed in a now-infamous internal email from Microsoft: "embrace, extend, extinguish".  

Getty loves microstock, buys into it - expands it, introduces new subscription plans - drives the price to the floor - floods buyers' searches with cheap, low-quality, repititious images - until contributors can no longer recover their costs and stop submitting new work, and buyers burn out.  Eventually, in the words of Yogi Berra - "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded".  

When the time is right, Getty will introduce a revolutionary "new" way to buy stock images, which will be a lot more expensive, and a lot more exclusive, and end up feeling a lot like the past.

Consider the online music business.  The big labels, with their army of lawyers, moved in and first shut down Napster, then (essentially) acquired it, carefully setting it up as a failure;   the cheap subscription model was tried by eMusic and others, but failed due to perceived lack of quality material.  So today, we pay - at iTunes or Amazon - almost as much for a dowloaded album  as we originally paid for a CD in the days before the internet.

I think you are giving them too much credit :) I work in a university and it never ceases to amaze how often people that are so smart do things that are so dumb :)

alias

« Reply #68 on: March 21, 2010, 11:42 »
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Very regular users need cheap content.
I need a Cessna since I'm tired of all this local transport here at 25km/h over mud roads. I really honestly do need it. And I need it very cheaply, let's say for 8 DT credits. Got the point? A regular user can ask what he wants, but nobody is forced to offer or to produce it for the price that user wants to or can spend. If the images are too expensive, he can always go out and shoot them himself.

A difference would be that nobody is going to give you that but plenty of people are already offering free content. And plenty of others are already offering cheap subscriptions. It's always going to be down to whether you want some of that business which will inevitably grow whether or not you are in it. Then it is about volume. These are roughly equivalent to the arguments which already took place around microstock in general.

I'm not advocating any of this but rather noting that it is an inevitable tide or trend since if someone does not serve a market at a particular price then someone else will. And in some ways I think it is possibly more interesting to see how any shifts affect prices, volumes and percentages at the other end of any market.

« Reply #69 on: March 21, 2010, 11:50 »
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It's the classic strategy for dealing with a threat of competitive innovation, as revealed in a now-infamous internal email from Microsoft: "embrace, extend, extinguish".  
...

I think you are giving them too much credit :) I work in a university and it never ceases to amaze how often people that are so smart do things that are so dumb :)

That is so true, and it's worth pointing out that Microsoft's "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy has mostly been a failure in the long run. 

« Reply #70 on: March 21, 2010, 12:09 »
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I'd elaborate more, but I'm on my phone.  My point is not that there isn't a market to be served - there may be.  But create a product to fill that need, don't reduce everything to the lowest factor.  Obviously people who aren't concerned about maintaining a certain level will upload everything to anywhere with a pulse, so you can make that product based on the content.  It must be based then on something else.  Terms that are tailored to that need.  Transitory blog?  Great.  Here's a one month license to use it for non-advertising.  Maybe even set up a hoylinked image system you can turn off at the end (there's stuff like that out there).  No need to price a full fledged RF license at crack induced rates just because someone 'wants' it.

« Reply #71 on: March 21, 2010, 12:28 »
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all very good points from both sides of the spectrum.
yes, embrace extend and extinguish may have failed in some, but in real estate ie. creating inner city slumps to drive prices down and then moving back in to buy them back and firesale giveaway prices have been done consistently in USA . still is,and i am sure being done elsewhere where there is political clout.

the speculation that Getty may be trying to kill microstock to drive sub prices (ha!, a good  pun... sub prices make micro earnings  dive like a sub).. and then introduce a premium stock genre later, does not sound atrocious.
in fact, i think i will welcome Getty's success, and quick.

let's encourage that generic la dee dah boring stock images to be over saturated by the top 4 and co, bring about the quick death to cheap stock images. submit all these generic images to all the sites that encourage sub prices. help Getty kill the market, so we can settle with IS and other sites who will only accept niche images and well shot images so that we can see the old high price images again.

sounds like a great idea. if we can't kill subs but revolting again sites who continue to drive earning lower, why don't we kill subs but getting the market flooded until buyers are so sick of seeing all these cheap banal generic images?

worth a try, i'd say! after all, we are already getting 30 cents for a XL download.
what have we got to lose to kill the sub market and bring it to a quicker death?
 

« Reply #72 on: March 21, 2010, 12:32 »
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My own opinon is that the internet is going to run its wires right around and past these agencies.   Google - and others - will eventually give photographers ways to make their portofolios directly and uniformly searchable by buyers everywhere.   We won't need microstock, we - collectively - will BE microstock.
« Last Edit: March 21, 2010, 15:56 by stockastic »

« Reply #73 on: March 21, 2010, 13:22 »
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My own opinon is that the internet is going to run uts wires right around and past these agencies.   Google - and others - will eventually give photographers ways to make their portofolios directly and uniformly searchable by buyers everywhere.   We won't need microstock, we - collectively - will BE microstock.

That would be an ideal situation...but my guess is that Getty would figure out a way to 'own' the search and still drive the first ten pages of results to a Getty site.

Also consider that if the photographers were all running independently, there would be a lot of flicker style content that would never have passed inspection at a 'real' stock site. For web content this is fine but not for print. Yes, I know print is dead/dying. Funny thing, I still get LOTS of catalogs, fliers, postcards etc. in my mailbox every day  :-\

« Reply #74 on: March 21, 2010, 13:58 »
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No, the Internet thing wouldn't work.  Most buyers need releases checked, quality high or at least usable, etc.  You need some kind of oversight, also to keep idiots from driving pricing to a penny.


 

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