or 

"Over the past fifteen years, Pond5 has become a thriving community of millions of buyers and sellers interacting, transacting, and creating together.
 
We are so grateful that you have made this journey with us. Today, we are thrilled to announce a monumental next step: Pond5 has joined Shutterstock to form an unrivaled creative platform that offers full-service solutions, high-quality content, and applications for brands, businesses, and media companies.
 
Our combined reach is unprecedented in the media licensing industry. Together, Pond5 and Shutterstock will bring your work to tens of millions of creatives around the world for use in feature films, video games, advertising campaigns, and much, much more.
 
Additionally, Pond5 and Shutterstock partner with the biggest companies in the world - including Google, Meta, Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, and Bytedance - with a combined user base in the billions.
 
The future is very bright and your work is destined for greatness!
 
You do not need to do anything differently - your content remains on Pond5 and, if you also contribute to Shutterstock, your content will continue to be licensable there. You should continue to upload new content as you would typically across both platforms. Finally, your payouts from both marketplaces will continue on their usual schedule.
 
As you may be aware, Pond5 and Shutterstock have very similar, but not identical, Contributor Agreements. We have no immediate plans to amend our Contributor Agreement (or any of the terms of use of our marketplace), nor does Shutterstock.
 
You will undoubtedly have questions in the coming weeks and months. As always, my team and I are here to help. Learn more on our Help Center or contact us at [email protected] and we�ll respond promptly.
 
We have an exciting road ahead of us, and we�re thankful to move forward side-by-side with you.
 
Sincerely,
Tom Crary, CEO"

FAQs - https://help.pond5.com/hc/en-us/sections/6126870297229

That�s some �exciting� news from the industry 🤦‍♂️
Wonder how this will effect p5/Adobe partnership?

edit

Great.

Yep . that makes two of us. don't want to deal with shitterstock artist's abuse on any level If they bring their stupid rules to P5 I will also go again to greener pastures. I am sorry as I really liked P5. A disgrace this news

If Pond5 ends up following the same commission schedule as Shitterstock, I will drop them as fast as I dropped Shitterstock the first time. I'll get to break up with them twice.

And now from SS:
To our creative community:

I am excited to announce Shutterstock�s acquisition of Pond5, a leading video-centric content marketplace with a mission to create world-class storytellers. Pond5 is a trusted partner for many filmmakers, media organizations and marketers worldwide due to its award-winning tools, including patented Visual Search for video, and it's easy-to-use platform. Through this acquisition, Shutterstock will not only gain a world class platform and tools, but will also expand its marketplace to include more customers and contributors than ever before.

For now, Shutterstock and Pond5 will continue to operate as separate distribution platforms. This means there will be no operational changes for our valued contributor networks on either Shutterstock or Pond5.

Together, Shutterstock and Pond5 will continue to find new ways to bring value to our creative communities, whether it be through education, submission support or data and insights.

Thank you for being a valued part of Shutterstock�s growth and evolution! We look forward to continuing on this journey with you.

Jon
Interim CEO, Shutterstock

Ok.
So I will close my pond5 account now as well.

Closed shutterstock when only 10 cent sales were coming in.
Now expecting pond5 videos will be sold for peanuts I�m opting out there as well.

Luckily Adobe is doing very well for me. So hopfully Adobe sales will increase instead even more.

Yep . that makes two of us. don't want to deal with shitterstock artist's abuse on any level If they bring their stupid rules to P5 I will also go again to greener pastures. I am sorry as I really liked P5. A disgrace this news

Quote from: wollwerth on May 11, 2022, 07:49

If Pond5 ends up following the same commission schedule as Shitterstock, I will drop them as fast as I dropped Shitterstock the first time. I'll get to break up with them twice.

Yeah, I'm exclusive with Pond5 right now and making decent money with them. Would be shame if ST ruined another company.

At least this time - in contrast to the announcement of the new revenue structure at shutterstock - they have saved themselves the trouble of making the contributors believe that this merger could also bring financial advantages. From my point of view, this is a good indication of where the journey is headed.

Buying off competition. I just hope pond5 won't share Bigstock's fate. Also we have a very weird situation where part of pond5 content is available on Alamy so Shutterstock is de facto an Alamy partner 

https://blog.pond5.com/14237-pond5-launches-global-partner-program-with-adobe-stock-integration/

and AdobeStock.

I can see one massive monopoly/cartel looming ahead.

Slightly off topic, but what happened about the 'collective' type group of contributors who were promised good things (in the  long term) from selling photos on Pond5 etc?

Emotions aside, I've crunched some numbers and it's clear that average RPD for clips is on freefall at SS. These are the historical stats from my port at SS (average of $12/download since 2019). Perhaps I'll be "lucky" to be earning $4/download on average from next year. Shouldn't be called RPD anymore, should be called RIP.

Meanwhile, Pond5 is holding steady at an average of $29/download since 2019. Even though volumes are 3x less than SS, average net earnings is 7x more per clip sold. 

Links to my respective ports, mainly travel editorials:

SS: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/AlexandreRotenberg/video?rid=1595060
P5: https://www.pond5.com/artist/alexandrerotenberg?tab=footage

Emotions aside, I've crunched some numbers and it's clear that average RPD for clips is on freefall at SS. These are the historical stats from my port at SS (average of $12/download since 2019). Perhaps I'll be "lucky" to be earning $4/download on average from next year. Shouldn't be called RPD anymore, should be called RIP.

Meanwhile, Pond5 is holding steady at an average of $29/download since 2019. Even though volumes are 3x less than SS, average net earnings is 7x more per clip sold. 

Links to my respective ports, mainly travel editorials:

SS: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/AlexandreRotenberg/video?rid=1595060
P5: https://www.pond5.com/artist/alexandrerotenberg?tab=footage

Thank you for the honest information.

4 dollars a download versus 29 dollars on average�how will that work?

This is the reason so many artists left SS.

What is the average on Adobe? Certainly more than 4 dollars.

We will see what happens, but whatever is the average now on SS will probably be the future for pond5.

And now from SS:
To our creative community:

I am excited to announce Shutterstock�s acquisition of Pond5, a leading video-centric content marketplace with a mission to create world-class storytellers. Pond5 is a trusted partner for many filmmakers, media organizations and marketers worldwide due to its award-winning tools, including patented Visual Search for video, and it's easy-to-use platform. Through this acquisition, Shutterstock will not only gain a world class platform and tools, but will also expand its marketplace to include more customers and contributors than ever before.

For now, Shutterstock and Pond5 will continue to operate as separate distribution platforms. This means there will be no operational changes for our valued contributor networks on either Shutterstock or Pond5.

Together, Shutterstock and Pond5 will continue to find new ways to bring value to our creative communities, whether it be through education, submission support or data and insights.

Thank you for being a valued part of Shutterstock�s growth and evolution! We look forward to continuing on this journey with you.

Jon
Interim CEO, Shutterstock

If they are still operating as separate platforms, what was the point SS buying them?

20 years ago I was with The Stock Market photo agency, they were acquire by Corbis.
Then they became Corbis Stock Market.
Then eventually Stock Market was under the Corbis umbrella.
I can just see the same happening here.