The reason they couldn't (or at least, won't) dump all the independent files is that it would immediately create a several hundred percent inflation of the lowest price points, which they use to try to lure buyers in. Faced with that, the buyers would desert in droves, so to keep the buyers they would have to cut the price of all the exclusive files in the main collection to the level of independent files, which would probably cut the average exclusives' earnings by more than half overnight, prompting a rush for the door by the remaining suppliers.

Yes, but cutting the price in half isn't necessarily the same as half revenue. Remember that when prices where a fraction of what they are today, overall revenue was often higher. High prices and price discrepancy could be the main reason buyers have left. And image exclusivity as a third option, yes, that sounds good.

And why not raise royalties to 50/50, wait ... no ... I'm having fantasies again ...

I would take it as a good sign, that the discussion was allowed to continue in the public forum. Maybe enough exclusives have left and not enough interesting people are going exclusive,so that finally someone is beginning to take the contributors seriously.

Maybe they were hoping to get a wave of people going exclusive after Yuri did it, who knows? Something like "Let�s bring in the King of microstock and then they will all follow..."

But I sincerly doubt his decision would influence a large number of people,especially the successful individual artist who knows their situation is completely different from Yuri. I can see a few newbies to the industry being convinced by him going exclusive though.

So if enough exclusives demand image exclusivity and otherwise people actually do quit their exclusive contract and whoever is coming in new is bringing less quality than what they lose with the people who are leaving, eventually they will introduce exclusive images.

A third option. The path in the middle.

In the end it also reflects that with a total oversupply of images everywhere the absolute value of exclusive images has gone down a lot. Successful content gets copied immediately both by exclusives and indies,so there is an endless stream of similar images,just coming from different contributors.

Longterm the agencies will be competing more on quality of search results and the overall buyer experience than content. Which is why SS is growing so fast, because they realized that years ago and didn�t even ask for exclusive content.

Longterm the agencies will be competing more on quality of search results and the overall buyer experience than content. Which is why SS is growing so fast, because they realized that years ago and didn�t even ask for exclusive content.

I believe that in the subscription market companies will be competing on market share alone and on their ability to sustain the ever lower prices of subscriptions (and very cheap single image sales) - for the longest. That is how a price war works. IMO the micro-stock market is not growing and is almost certainly in decline - therefore they can only take customers from each other. It could end up being difficult for people supplying the subscription model since increased sales at one may be matched by declining sales at another. And yet both are too good currently for indies to abandon.

Whilst some companies have subscription as their business model, others probably see it as something which needs to be contained if possible. SS was never in any position to ask for exclusive content. But looking at this from a slightly different perspective - I do not find it coincidental that Offset is called that.

��SS has said from the start that it is their explicit policy not to accept exclusive content��

For most of their history they were not in a position to require exclusive images because they were the number 2 earner.

I believe that there is a sustainable future for small agencies and collectives which exist on their own terms offering exclusive content and which shun the idea of even bothering to try to compete in a world of subscription etc. Sustainability IMO is partly about only needing to earn enough to continue comfortably - without ever expecting to make millions or billions and without ever needing to satisfy the ever escalating expectations of investors or shareholders. In much the same way as there is a good future for independent coffee houses and the people who sell organic vegetables at the market.

But SS etc are something quite different. For them image is a commodity in a world of agencies which are ultimately run and owned by big finance. They care about satisfying the expectations of their investors - and trading the future earnings of the businesses is as important as selling images. That is not a criticism. It's one version of an inevitable way in which things seem to happen.

The US market might have reached saturation, i.e. most web designers and regular customers are getting their stock from somewhere, but there is a huge, huge world out there, that can still be discovered, anything outside of the English language group and especially countries moving up.

I do not believe that there is any reason to believe that the world outside of North America and europe is likely to adopt a web model which mimics the evolution of the online world of the early 2000s. I do not believe that there is another boom going to happen.

Today it is not only that the market is saturated. The web business boom of the 2000s was funded by credit which is no longer available. There is much less business today. Also - businesses and official organisations and voluntary groups are today far less likely to require paid web content. Partly because the social media has, for many, largely replaced the need to maintain an old fashioned website - and the content they do use today is now far more likely to have been shot on an iPhone and shared for free by their customers or employees. Nobody is going to pay for social media content.

Bloggers and news sites today are far more likely to be using free or syndicated content - often supplied by the companies they are writing about. Subscription, specifically, is also undermined by social sharing and the legitimization of Pinterest - which some agencies see as a marketing opportunity. Sites like Pinterest undermine subscription.

Then there is still a huge number of people who prefer to steal than to buy, conversion of even a small group of thieves would significantly increase sales. this is a part where agencies could even work  together.

I do not believe that there is much evidence that any significant number of would-be subscription customers are currently using stolen content ? I do not believe that thieves are, for the most part, potential customers. This is not the same as music or films.

Now it is a service war, who will be the amazon or ebay of the industry.

It is not an industry on those sorts of scales. The question is which will be the biggest and brightest site with the cheapest subscriptions or all-you-can-eat licensing deals with Facebook, Yahoo, MSN or whatever the next mass market thing is. Those new licensing models depend upon tracking technologies but also undermine subscription as it has existed during the part decade. I believe that these sorts of deals, and free, are going to eat into 2000s style subscription models.

What I think I am saying is that I believe that the market for more expensive content is much more likely to be sustainable than a market for cheap content.

Main collection exclusive or not + no quality control - TS
The rest possibly on an image exclusive basis to a re-branded IS like stocksy / offset

OK, in the Queen's English..  IS is being run into the ground to the extent indies are delighted to be in the partner program and quite a few exclusives would like to have the option.  I am suggesting that the intention is migrate the main collection to the partner program and retain what they perceive as higher value images in a re-launched istock - possibly image rather than contributor exclusive to attract the better breed of indy.

In 2010 the site was not a dysfunctional mess.  There are 2 possible explanations:

1. It is run by complete idiots who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground
2. There is a strategy to burn the thing to the ground and start something new or maybe just burn it to the ground and carry on with Getty and the partner program.

midstock with over half collection priced from 1 to 7 credits?

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on October 31, 2013, 04:16

The reason they couldn't (or at least, won't) dump all the independent files is that it would immediately create a several hundred percent inflation of the lowest price points, which they use to try to lure buyers in. Faced with that, the buyers would desert in droves, so to keep the buyers they would have to cut the price of all the exclusive files in the main collection to the level of independent files, which would probably cut the average exclusives' earnings by more than half overnight, prompting a rush for the door by the remaining suppliers.

Yes, but cutting the price in half isn't necessarily the same as half revenue. Remember that when prices where a fraction of what they are today, overall revenue was often higher. High prices and price discrepancy could be the main reason buyers have left. And image exclusivity as a third option, yes, that sounds good.

And why not raise royalties to 50/50, wait ... no ... I'm having fantasies again ...

That makes hypothetical sense.  However, for us indies, it is no longer a hypothetical situation.  We are experiencing it and so we know the answer.  Cutting prices in half did pretty much halve, or nearly halve, our istock incomes overnight. 

Keep telling yourself that Getty has a long term plan for Istock, and that they care about keeping Istock exclusives happy and solvent.  Better yet, put it on your Christmas list and mail it to Santa Claus at the North Pole. 

Quote from: lisafx on October 31, 2013, 17:24

Cutting prices in half did pretty much halve, or nearly halve, our istock incomes overnight. 

Is that true for all nonexclusives?  I thought most people had reported something like 30% down but that was a while ago, I can't remember too many reports about this recently.

The ones I have talked to, yes, royalties are halved, or as I said above "nearly halved".   Lucky me that I don't have to wrack my brain to "remember too many reports".  I can look at my own stats, which are stark and printed in black and white. 

But even assuming you are correct, and most people are down a mere 30% ( ) and you think exclusives would jump at the chance to lose only 30% more of their income, then I guess you have proved your point... wait... what was your point again?

Quote from: heywoody on October 31, 2013, 16:54

OK, in the Queen's English..  IS is being run into the ground to the extent indies are delighted to be in the partner program and quite a few exclusives would like to have the option.  I am suggesting that the intention is migrate the main collection to the partner program and retain what they perceive as higher value images in a re-launched istock - possibly image rather than contributor exclusive to attract the better breed of indy.

A couple things.  iStock isn't being run into the ground, it's still the largest microstock (midstock now?) site in terms of revenue probably by about 50% (but at least by a wide margin) over SS.  I think that has been established as fact by now.  I do think the entire main collection will be mirrored to the Partner Program, exclusive content included.  They just relaunched the brand, I don't see any new relaunch happening anytime in the foreseeable future.  What 'better breed of indie' are they trying to attract that they don't have now?

I admire your (unrequited) loyalty.  Let's look at some of the evidence:

�   Quality control is gone.  It was pretty one dimensional but at least buyers could be confident of technical quality.  Big element of marketability gone;
�   Pricing is more than halved (they never learned their 2 times tables and  P+ used to be a nice extra) on a huge proportion of content with no increase in sales volumes.  A small number of contributors seem to be doing ok but virtually all indies and a fair chunk of high performing exclusives are down.  IS trousers the bulk of the revenue so multiply the total contributor losses by 2 or three and this is lost revenue to the agency;
�   The PP always generated more volume but now the prices are better and moving away from subs only - reason unknown but likely that credit buyers are moving over;
�   The re-branding really just sends the message that it's a little bit of Getty;
�   The better breed of indy is not currently putting any exclusive content up there

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