Author Topic: Something positive at IS, royalty rate stays the same next year (Read 23512 times)

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #75 on:** January 03, 2013, 01:33 »

Quote from: jsnover on January 02, 2013, 11:22

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on January 02, 2013, 04:24

...Of course, this is grossly unfair to those who sold exactly the same number of files as, for example, jsnover but are now trapped a level below her because their sales have not fallen the way hers have. (Nothing personal intended - but I'm sure an extra 8,000 credits could have shifted a lot of people)

It may have been 6K not 8K but it was definitely over 5K as I am 99% certain that the last time I looked at that number some time in December it was not over 30K.

I agree that it's unfair, even within a totally misbegotten system, to "help" some people and not others. From what others have said, Getty was aware when they started it that the key was to keep the top contributors happy, regardless of how they scr3wed everyone else.

My only puzzle is why I would have been included in the people to help - they never included me in the inner circle or gave me any sort of indication I mattered to anyone while I was exclusive. Largely the opposite.

First, they said they were going to roll over current rates and mine has gone up one point from what it was in 2012. Second, I'm an independent, and as such am part of the lower than dirt group that supports the higher payments to iStock exclusives by getting less than the Getty target of 20%. Why help me? My work is already everywhere else.

My guess is that they don't want to be seen as being in thrall to a couple of hundred top exclusives. It might give them too much of a sense of their own importance while infuriating thousands of others (once more). Imagine the row if word got out the fifty hand-picked exclusives had got grandfathered back into their 2012 pay level because iS was running scared that they would drop their crowns and everyone else was being told to get stuffed. Someone posted on IS what the cash difference was between one level and the next, and it is thousands. It's far better to produce a policy that applies equally to everyone than to argue over a list of people's names as to which one needs special treatment and which one doesn't - and big business policy-makers never like to deal with "special cases", they know it lays them open to a clamour from all those who think they are also special and feel snubbed ... and how can you ever respond to such demands? "Go away, you are of no importance to us"? That sort of message belongs in the pre-Rebecca-communication age.

So I think you are just one of the smaller fish that got caught in the trawl along with the real quarry.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #76 on:** January 03, 2013, 02:12 »

Quote from: pancaketom on January 02, 2013, 13:58

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on January 02, 2013, 04:24
....
In effect it is an admission of the complete failure of the RC system because it says that if you sold more images in the past than some newbie you get a higher payment rate - even though the newbie may be outselling you today. Which is exactly the "unfairness" the RCs was meant to overcome.
....

The RC system was never meant to rectify any unfairness other than the fact that over time IS would have to pay exclusives that sold a lot up to 40%. They might have tried to sell it as being more fair, but really it was just a way to control and limit the % they had to pay to the artists.

I've never believed for a minute that the "fairness" argument was anything other than a smokescreen to cover a cash grab - hence my quote marks. But once they admit that fairness has nothing to do with it then there is no longer any acceptable explanation for what they did ("sustainability" also being a transparent lie). The true explanation almost certainly being nothing more than "Getty says supplier commissions must be split 80/20 overall so we're going to cut your pay". That's why they chucked out a system that rewarded exclusives according to their loyalty, skill, talent and effort - each in due measure - and replaced it with one that allowed their statisticians to manipulate the payout percentage and had no regard for anything other than sales volume.

The old system was stable, successful and sustainable, which it proved over the course of half-a-dozen years before it was needlessly scrapped. The new system was unstable from the very first day (didn't they fiddle at the margins with people who hadn't achieved their levels the moment it was brought in) was obviously broken within a year, when they were unable to set "targets" and then had to change those targets after they had been set (if I remember rightly). Now, after two years, they have had to throw out the basic principles of the new system largely because they are reaping the consequences arising from the decision to scrap the old one.

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Author Topic: Something positive at IS, royalty rate stays the same next year (Read 23512 times)

BaldricksTrousers

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