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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
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1
« on: January 28, 2025, 06:48 »
Thanks for those links. It's good to have buyer perspective - without buyers, we (contributors) are wasting our time, after all  Even with a persistent filter choice for buyers - to let those who don't want to see genAI content avoid it - I think the issue of crazy-long review times and very low volumes of new non-AI content will be noticed by buyers. I think it's a variation on an old notion that " bad money drives out good". IMO the better choice would be to very tightly curate the genAI collection, so that it's adding value to the collection instead of flooding it with content that buyers want to hide because it's a nuisance. Yesterday I shared some stats about a week's addition to the collection. Buyers need to see usable new content coming in on a regular basis - look at the history of now-defunct stock web sites that ran into trouble if they didn't keep the new content coming.
2
« on: January 27, 2025, 15:35 »
The last small batch I submitted in December took just over a month. A few days before that I'd had one item uploaded earlier that day (a transparent PNG) that was reviewed in less than 24 hours. I've had most accepted but the rejections - the meaninglessly generic "quality issues" - make no sense to me. I continue to keep an eye on the collection growth overall, and at the moment I don't see any point, for me, in uploading anything new. At least to Adobe Stock. Last week (Jan 21 to 27; Monday Jan 20 was a federal holiday in the US) the overall collection grew by just over 6.8 million items. 88.9% of those items - just over 6 million - were genAI. In addition to volume, genAI fakes with titles and keywords claiming to be real cities, animals, birds, buildings, etc. are being accepted. The over-saturated fakes don't look like the original but there it sits next to actual photographs of the real thing. London, Paris, Seattle, Austin TX, Portland ME, Grand Tetons. Places large and small. Earlier there were rules about not labeling things as if they were real when they weren't, but I don't see that any more aside from IP issues (such as artists' names or styles). As a contributor, it feels like totally unfair competition. A form of image & keyword spam. From the buyer's point of view they have to be super careful to avoid embarrassing their company because they didn't realize a title of "Custom House, Portland Maine: Historic Landmark" didn't mean what it said. I don't know what Adobe Stock's overall plan is for this huge influx of genAI content - this is about 300 million new items in a year. That was the whole collection in June 2022 - has the number of items downloaded grown anything like as fast as the collection? I'm happy that there's currently a market for photographs, but the potential for return on time invested (given I have the equipment and don't pay models that's essentially my total outlay) seems really slim.
3
« on: January 27, 2025, 10:04 »
Yes - last week. I think Jan 22
4
« on: January 24, 2025, 16:51 »
Although I opted in to receive electronic 1099s last year, in today's mail there was a paper 1099 for 2024.
Same information as on the 1099 I downloaded on Wednesday
5
« on: January 22, 2025, 19:27 »
...Joanne, where exactly did you put in a "leading zero"? I tried putting it in front of my vendor number and I still get an error: "EIN/TIN/SSN does not match Vendor Number - Please Retry (0)." 
All my info matches the info on last years 1099.
I typed a 0 and then pasted in my 4-digit Fotolia ID. I checked the amount reported on the 1099 it produced and the dollar amount is different from 2023 as well as the year it's reporting says "2024", so I think I'm getting a legit form. Last year I did "sign up" to receive electronic 1099s in the future - no idea why that would have any bearing on how things behave this year. And I selected "Display on Screen" from the dropdown, not "copy to downloads folder". (A side note: If you display on screen, it's a PDF, but when you click the download button that appears on every PDF displayed in a browser, the file name filled in has an ".html" extension instead of .pdf. Nothing about this works as it should...) Perhaps support - the Contact us link on the left side - needs to help?
6
« on: January 22, 2025, 18:08 »
...
- in January 25 I had 322 DL so far
- in January 24 (on the same day) I had 480 DL
............In 2024 I started with 35,675 files and on 12/31/2024 there were 49,052...
I don't typically post in "how many were sold" threads, but thought I'd make an exception. I'm a small producer although I've been licensing stock images since 2004. Right now my Adobe Stock portfolio is 2,503 images. It was 2383 at the beginning of 2024. I've had 308 downloads so far this month and was thinking it was slow, but you had only a fraction more with nearly 20 times as many items. I'm gobsmacked. I don't honestly know what that says about business at Adobe Stock or its customers' needs & preferences, but possibly it says that the market for non-genAI content hasn't evaporated yet (I don't have any genAI work). It might just be a function of oversupply - you have good stuff but there's just too much genAI work for the demand? In terms of your photos being boring, I would say that useful trumps pretty in stock any time - I think I upload lots of material in the "boring infrastructure" segment. I hope you manage to work out something positive for perking up sales (and many apologies if this comes across as rude; I don't mean it that way at all!)
7
« on: January 22, 2025, 15:15 »
Has anyone tried to obtain 2024 1099 forms yet? (not sure if they are available).
I tried the same process I used one year ago (for the 2023 tax form, link:https://236230.invoiceinfo.com/get1099.html) but I got a message: "EIN/TIN/SSN does not match Vendor Number - Please Retry (0)."
I hadn't tried as I just assumed they wouldn't be there yet. But after reading your note I did and was successful in getting the 2024 1099 As I had noted last year, for my "vendor number" I have to put in a leading zero as it's too few digits (4). The whole settup is terrible - it should be linked from the contributor account interface not some random web page. And when last year I couldn't access it, I never got a reply to my request for support (I figured out the leading zero on my own).
9
« on: January 18, 2025, 16:33 »
...most (maybe [?] not quite all) of these high value sales are via Getty, so only get us 20%, no matter which level we're on. Remember, it's all smoke and mirrors (i.e. hidden in the Small Print) with Getty!
In case this is useful to anyone else mad enough to be considering iStock exclusivity(!) I thought I'd share my calculations. I spent a little time today with Google sheets to look at my 2024 downloads and royalties to see what they would have been for an exclusive contributor at the 30% royalty level. I use DeepMeta's online stats but I couldn't see any way to get the information I needed from that. The hypothetical exclusive royalties, just based on raising my current 15% across the board to 20% for Getty and partner licenses and 30% for iStock licenses would increase by 74%. IOW quite a bit less than double as I had naively been thinking. Each month the number and $$ value of Getty vs iStock sales varies - a low of 31% Getty sales in October to a high of 51% in November. The Getty RPD was higher every month, but the higher volume of iStock sales more than made up. With the different increases for the two sections if I apply exclusive rates, iStock goes from 61% in 2024 to 70% in the hypothetical total; Getty's portion drops from 38% to 29% It's just about impossible to predict what the split would be for another contributor or me in another year, but clearly where the additional sales are made matters - I'd do much better with my December $122 license being sold from iStock (going from 15% to 30%) versus from Getty (going from 15% to 20%) YMMV
10
« on: January 18, 2025, 08:00 »
A decent month. I have to remember to keep breathing when I see a great license for one of my newer images - $122.xx and beside it 15% of that for my share!
I could double the royalty rate if I went exclusive again
.... most (maybe [?] not quite all) of these high value sales are via Getty, so only get us 20%, no matter which level we're on. Remember, it's all smoke and mirrors (i.e. hidden in the Small Print) with Getty!
Good reminder! I did go back to look, and that - as well as some other higher value licenses - were from iStock, not Getty. I take it that your Getty sales section shows 20% in the PDF statement versus your earned royalty rate for the other (non Connect) sections? The month's RPD was better than many this year, but $0.68 is still pretty low. Having been exclusive for a few years once before, I have no illusions. When all the agencies are behaving badly, the appeal of dealing with only one miscreant goes up
11
« on: January 17, 2025, 20:09 »
A decent month. I have to remember to keep breathing when I see a great license for one of my newer images - $122.xx and beside it 15% of that for my share! I could double the royalty rate if I went exclusive again
12
« on: January 17, 2025, 16:14 »
Question: now that the new minimum number of accepted assets is 150, where on my account can I see how many were accepted this year?
150 was the 2024 number. But if you look at your portfolio in the contributor Dashboard and sort it by Date instead of Downloads (dropdown on the far right), you can then count based on the upload date. Click on a thumbnail and the file details are displayed, including upload date. There are 100 items per page, so you'll only have to count once you get to the transition from 2025 to 2024 (later in the year). It isn't clear if the upload date or the approval date is the one that matters - once upon a time those would only have been a day or two apart - but don't cut it close.
13
« on: January 17, 2025, 11:01 »
...
For a number of years - since 2018, and then you only needed one approved upload - contributors who sell a reasonable volume of licenses get the additional compensation of an Adobe Subscription. And the low end of the sales required is still extremely small compared to prior years.
...
In the beginning the bonus was based only on numbers of approved assets, and the first time it was 300. I don't remember if it was in 2018 or 2019, but that info can probably be found by looking back in this forum.
Not quite. It was either 300 assets or $500 in sales https://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/creative-cloud-giveway-for-adobe-stock-contributorsIf you met the $500 test you still had to be an "active" contributor. At that time, active meant have one approved asset added since Jan 1 2018
14
« on: January 16, 2025, 19:29 »
...and then come on...come on guys,150 contents approved in a year are really nothing,and I really think we just have to thank Adobe who gives us free software every year,don't be greedy!
It's the huge change that's the issue. The previous two years the requirement was 20 and this year 7.5 times as much (150). It also seems entirely pointless. If rewarding uploads were the only goal - and I have no idea what goal that would achieve as uploads cost Adobe money; it's only when licenses sell that there's any point in any uploads - then setting the numbers to get the upload volume desired would make sense. While I do understand some people being upset they didn't meet the requirements...IT IS A BONUS! Why are you crying that you didn't get a BONUS???...
No one is crying When a bonus is part of someone's overall compensation package and one year they don't get the bonus, they are often unhappy. For a number of years - since 2018, and then you only needed one approved upload - contributors who sell a reasonable volume of licenses get the additional compensation of an Adobe Subscription. And the low end of the sales required is still extremely small compared to prior years. It's not words that count when a company describes what's important, it's actions. And IMO this change is effectively saying that contributors who sell lots of licenses aren't important to them any more. They were before, but not now. I don't like being treated this way and can only blame myself if I stick around, essentially telling Adobe Stock that it's fine with me. They send their messages to contributors with changes in compensation. We get to respond as we see fit.
15
« on: January 15, 2025, 12:02 »
I'm really disappointed - I no longer qualify for anything free from Adobe Stock.
I had fewer downloads in 2024 than 2023, so I was aware I'd probably slip back to the single app plan, which wasn't a big deal.
However, I never imagined there'd be such a big leap in the number of approved assets required to qualify - the last two years 20+ was enough to qualify as an active contributor.
I've never been a high volume contributor but only had 117 approved assets in 2024 which isn't enough.
I had 5739 downloads - that's where Adobe Stock makes 70% of what they llicense my content for, but that doesn't count for anything?
Right now I'm angry and thinking of closing my account, but I'll go away and try and calm down to think about what's in my best interests.
The flood of new content Adobe Stock has been accepting suggests they aren't short of new material. But some newbie who had 350 downloads the whole year gets the free software and I don't? And when you announce the program after the year is over, there's no chance to do anything to add some uploads?
It's just utterly disrespectful of contributors who make sales, IMO.
16
« on: January 13, 2025, 09:13 »
A couple of months ago I had posted about the growth of the Adobe Stock collection over the previous 7 months; essentially that the genAI collection had grown much faster than the human-created portion (82% vs 6.1%) Separately from the issues of quality of accepted items, buyers' needs or number of buyers are not growing at anything like the rate that the AI collection is. In the last two weeks (Dec 30 to Jan 13), nearly 13.5 million genAI items have been added to the collection. 6.15% growth in two weeks Human-made items have grown 0.39%, just over 1.5 million items Another sobering thought is that now the genAI part of the collection is over half of the human-created part - 231,557,938 genAI and 401,987,228 human created. The genAI collection today is essentially the same size as the entire collection in Oct 2020 (232,291,841) Adobe's thoughts are likely elsewhere - focused on the builk of their business and the role investors see AI playing in the company's future earnings. Adobe Stock is not a significant factor in that drama - it's all about monetizing AI add-ons to Creative Cloud subscriptions and banishing thoughts about all those subscriptions vanishing as creatives are replaced by AI tools. While there are creative humans licensing content from Adobe Stock for their projects, giving them the best stuff at reasonable prices means sorting out search results is important. Not sure that accepting masses of content that you turn off in default searches makes any sense. Revisiting the policies for what genAI content you accept seems to make more sense - view the collection as a whole and target gaps you want to fill. Edited to add links to a couple of Reddit threads where Adobe Stock customers were complaining about the genAI content being a problem for them. The first one is recent, prompted by the recent search change. The second is older but has some recent replies as well. There's definitely a theme that for some buyers, default being to exclude AI would be a plus https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/199xe3a/does_anyone_find_it_messed_up_that_adobe_stock_is/https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/1i09zlh/probably_adobe_stock_hides_ai_images_for/Some quotes: "I use adobe stock daily and it became my absolute nightmare. Not only its littered with AI photos most of them are absolutely garbage. Full of artefacts that you can only see once downloaded. Give me back 3d rendered graphics if anything please." "I use stock images A TON so we're always looking at different stock photo/video options....we ventured over to Adobe Stock. * pointless venture. It's almost entirely AI generated stuff. If I wanted AI generated I would fire up Stable Diffusion and have it generate me an image. I want my stock site to give me real life photos." "My company also has the subscription to Adobe stock. Downloaded an image, used it in my InDesign file, submitted it for review. At first glance this images seem normal but once you start working with them you notice nothing makes sense and the details are all messed up. If I was paying for the image Id be pretty pissed. I know there is an icon for AI images but there is no quality control. They are a mess and when reviewing the thumbnail before downloading its easy to overlook."
17
« on: January 10, 2025, 09:25 »
Thanks for the link and AI summary (I did not want to watch either!) https://www.linkedin.com/in/annagdickson/I looked at prior jobs - she's been at SS less than a year - and wanted to see what her first job at Google included. She went there after a very short stint as a photo editor at the Wall St Journal. The Google job seemed to be all about automating processes of evaluating images to cut costs (emphasis mine) "- Scaled content creation efforts, photographing 400+ restaurants a month nationally - Launched Visual Quality Human Eval process to monitor product health - Scaled Curation via Human Eval, reducing cost from ~$8 per rating to ~$0.50 per rating, resulting in ~1M curated images- Develop a framework to measure relevance & quality of content - Partnered with PMs, Eng & UX to develop a classifier to automatically identify high quality imagery- Developed a Local Guide Photo Contest tool and piloted a contest w. Canon Camera resulting in 22k submissions and 267k images" My take on this is that the career so far has had minimal connection with the well being or needs of content suppliers. It's all about managing, automating and cost cutting for the business dealing with suppliers. http://annagdickson.com/In describing herself - she's a "...global thought leader on the ever-changing multimedia landscape..." and has "...astute knowledge of all things content..." I'm not feeling any warm and fuzzies for the humans who produce this "content"
18
« on: January 08, 2025, 08:51 »
Interesting take on the Getty/Shutterstock news from the Millwaukee Independent https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/explainers/big-photo-getty-images-shutterstock-merge-3-7b-deal-form-new-visual-content-powerhouse/So customers feel their situation was sidelined by the happy-talk from the two CEOs at yesterday's conference call: "Representatives of Shutterstock have begun to offer reassurances to its subscribers, specifically telling the Milwaukee Independent that in the near term, nothing would change in how Shutterstock customers license images, videos, and other media. A company spokesperson also explained that there would be no immediate impact on how Shutterstock subscribers sourced, purchased, or managed content. The merger is expected to offer customers more options to license content, as a benefit from the combined libraries. But despite belated efforts to reassure existing clients, the manner in which Getty Images and Shutterstock unveiled their deal has left some uneasy. In many creative and editorial circles, the announcement sparked initial concern from businesses that rely on Shutterstock images. The fear is that the more expensive and stricter licensing by Getty Images would dictate massive changes. Such apprehension was magnified by what critics say was an overly celebratory tone from the merging corporations by highlighting the revenue from their stocks, yet offering minimal public-facing information about the benefits to their customers. Both companies put all their energy into celebrating the new massive value and stock revenue windfall, while completely omitting any message or information to their extensive customer base, said a consultant for a small nonprofit that relies heavily on stock photography via Reddit. That only escalates the fear that policies and pricing structures could shift with little warning. Its left people feeling anxious about how the transformation might jeopardize budgets or access to content. More to read: https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/1hvq4np/getty_images_and_shutterstock_to_merge/https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/getty-images-merger-shutterstock-1236103000/https://www.fastcompany.com/91256130/getty-images-shutterstock-merge-3-7-billion-dealThe above article mentions competition from genAI images; both CEOs dismissed any impact on their licensing from genAI in the Q&A section of yesterday's conference call. Either they were just spouting the party line, or possibly that isn't really a major factor in deciding to merge? "The merger comes at a time when companies that use still images are facing increased competition from images generated by artificial intelligence. The companies said Tuesday that they have complementary portfolios and that a merger will provide customers with a broader array still imagery, video, music, 3D, and other media." There's a lot of overlap in the collections.
19
« on: January 07, 2025, 09:07 »
Apparently the stock market is happy about the announcement. In pre-market trading, SSTK and GETY are up. Over 25% for SSTK and over 44% for GETY. I'll be on the lookout for how the two companies frame this move to their investors and the business community. There'll be better clues for us (suppliers) as to how this might unfold than the warm-and-fuzzy words about expanded opportunities and trust in the contributor e-mail Here's a link to the slides of the investor presentation. Note the descriptions of "synergies" they anticipate: Content and Product Optimization Consolidation of IT Systems Streamlined Operating Model https://investor.shutterstock.com/static-files/de522e71-d1ac-4861-9427-49719876344bNot clear (to me) where the "expanded opportunities" to content creators come from (assuming you were already with both agencies). From the article below: "The combined operations also will present a more considerable competitor for big technology companies that are leveraging generative artificial intelligence to transform the creation of visual content and could disrupt the marketplace." https://www.investors.com/news/getty-images-shutterstock-merge-gety-adbe-ai-trump-antitrust/From the Q&A at the end of the conference call this morning, Peters was asked about the overlap between the two companies from a revenue perspective. He emphasized how complementary the two businesses were - different content (Getty is focused on exclusive content), SS's broader reach into small & medium businesses, more geographic reach. Hennessey joined in to emphasize differences in people, distribution channels, asset types, platform types. He said the businesses are different. I can see why they'd want to say that, but I don't think the differences are as great as they said. I'd guess that a major portion of the heavily licensed content (versus the total collection for both) is overlap. Additionally, when you have theoretically exclusive stock images - of an isolated apple, a potted plant, etc. - they look largely the same, and can easily be substituted with a similar non-exclusive item. Asked about additional opportunities for the combined companies, Peters said he saw investment accelerating delivery of improvements (search, customer service, genAI) versus finding new ones. Peters also said that they did not see any reduction of licensing content as a result of genAI. Hennessey said they had not seen any negative impact, just growth opportunities "1+1=3". Don't ask me to explain the quote!
20
« on: January 04, 2025, 22:55 »
22
« on: December 23, 2024, 13:29 »
23
« on: December 17, 2024, 10:46 »
This morning the total collection on Adobe Stock was 604,562,465. Four years ago (Nov 30 2020) it was 238,609,759. Today, the genAI portion of the collection was 205,613,425 - very close to the total collection size 4 years earlier. Adobe Stock's math is strange - if you exclude AI images it says the total is 399,025,915. Add that to the genAI total and an extra 76,875 images appear. I'm assuming the numbers are mostly right and don't worry about 100k here or there Yesterday I looked at the entire collection sorted by downloads and noted that the first few pages were almost all free items (they're marked). On the first page, 91/100 were freebies; on page 2 it was 78/100. I'm sure Adobe would argue that the freebies bring in overall business to the site, but it's sad that all time best sellers are so drowned out by freebies. When I looked at the genAI collection sorted by downloads, what stood out was how most of them could very well have been traditional stock images/illustrations/3D renders. The top selling genAI image is an isolated red arrow - and that's on page 4 of the entire collection bestseller list. A fine simple curved arrow. There are over 750k images for a search on red arrow (about 114k genAI). Looking in the Discord group where new contributors ask about why their AI images were rejected it became clear that there were some truly terrible images being submitted. I'd previously focused on my (growing) collection of truly terrible genAI images accepted The Apple logos have gone, but the quality of what's getting accepted doesn't help buyers. There's also repetitive items - I made a screenshot this morning of 53 near-identical Christmas arrangements on a wood table - candles, cinnamon sticks, pine cones, etc. from one contributor. All of us who've been around a while have received rejections for "similars". Not sure what value there is for customers in 53 horizontal versions of the same scene. Then there was the white "bumblebee" with 8 legs, my fire hazard collection (candles setting the house on fire); staircases that'll kill you, crabs & lobsters not found on planet earth; a Happy Thanksgiving word sign with the T and the g cut off; "MCRRY CHRISTMAS"; "AGEESIM"..... All recent acceptances. All useless except to illustrate that genAI produces pretty slop a lot of the time. And which should not have been accepted into a top tier collection of stock. And ADBE is down again this morning.
24
« on: December 17, 2024, 00:54 »
.when were they ever not "cutting royalties from contributors"!?
Believe it or not, back in the beginning they did steadily increase royalties - from 20 cents to 23 (for those of us around during the buggy start of FTP uploads) to 25 cents and then the tiered system that paid 38 cents. All the agencies were much more reasonable when they didnt have content and were afraid to lose us
25
« on: December 16, 2024, 13:24 »
All together of my 3 adobe accounts i got $18 one day, ...
I don't think you've been doing this long enough to have much perspective. $18 for the day is a slow day - for even one account. You have the enthusiasm part well covered. Now you need to understand the market, your buyers and try to provide useful content, not just any-old-content
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