I know this is old but I thought it was worth commenting on rather than starting a new thread.

The article is from January but I just found it today and never saw it mentioned here and I think it is something people will be interested in.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/richard-prince-lawsuit-expert-opinions-402173

Very interesting read - thanks for posting a link

Here's some press coverage of Adobe's results and prospects:

This interview with the CEO is pretty shallow - softball questions get PR-speak answers that I think say very little. If, as an example, you look at some of the user complaints about recent updates to Lightroom (they had to back off one update completely after user outcry and have followed that with a problem ridden one), the idea of Adobe as a product-driven innovator is a bit hard to take.

http://finance.yahoo.com/video/adobe-transition-desktop-cloud-pays-224523995.html

http://investorplace.com/2016/03/adobe-adbe-stock-earnings-cloud/#.VvNtCmQrI18

http://fortune.com/2016/03/22/adobe-marketing-analytics/?xid=yahoo_fortune

http://marketrealist.com/2016/03/adobes-fiscal-1q16-results-beat-analysts-expectations/

If you look at the percentage of Adobe's total revenue that their subscription income represents, it's 77%. It's clear why investors and Adobe love subscriptions, but they are betting on a continued state of no/few viable alternatives to their offerings (which isn't nearly as much the case in the mobile space as it is with the traditional graphics apps.

On page 6 of the earnings call transcript here there was a question specifically about Adobe Stock. They wouldn't give specifics but made general noises about growth

http://www.thestreet.com/story/13499952/6/adobe-systems-adbe-earnings-report-q1-2016-conference-call-transcript.html

"...The first is, as it relates to revenue for stock during the quarter, it was in line with our expectations, so it's doing well. Again, just to refresh folks, we offer on-demand Stock as a way for people to buy particular Stock assets. We certainly offer a Stock-only subscription, and we then offer a combined subscription, which allows people to both access Stock, as well as our desktop products.
And so, across all of them, we are continuing to see accelerated usage of the Stock subscriptions. We don't break that out, Kash, in terms of what it is. And that's the reason we're focused on just continuing to make sure we gain market share in the stock, and deliver value. I think big picture, as we've always said, over 80% of the people who are buying or selling Stock are using our products, and that's the opportunity.
From a road map point of view, we look at integrating the Stock service more directly within our applications, as a way to both increase awareness for our customers, and to improve their work flows. So as the year progresses, we continue to expect to do better in Stock, moving forward. So off to a good start, and it's early in the entire marketplace strategy for Adobe."

There were also questions about how AdobeStock would increase ARPU (average revenue per user), but there were some non-answers about why measuring that didn't really make sense any more because of so many variations - like their newly introduced offerings for the education market. Then there was a question about increasing ARPU in areas other than Stock. I think the analysts are trying to see if there's any growth potential in the business after you get everyone on the platform. The CEO's answer

"The opportunity for ARPU expansion around Stock is, we are attracting people to the platform. We are certainly attracting them at what we would call promotional pricing. So that's one big opportunity. And we're clearly seeing, as people come onto the Creative Cloud platform, they typically they come from CS-6 and prior versions, where we give them a promotional pricing, and then convert into the full pricing.
The other opportunity for ARPU expansion is moving from single app to the entire product. The third opportunity for ARPU expansion is Acrobat. We're certainly seeing a lot of people, and that's why we are moving them more through the Creative Cloud funnel, as opposed to the Document Cloud funnel, up-selling them into the entire product.
And last, but certainly not least, while it's not called ARPU, within the enterprise, as well, as we move from selling what used to be custom-like solutions of Creative Suite, into the entire Creative Cloud complete. So even on the core desktop products, there's ARPU expansion against all of those four.
Then, in addition to that, it's the new services that we have introduced, and will continue to introduce, that represents ARPU expansion."

I think it's interesting that no one asked them about the potential impact of competitors like Canva. To the extent that new non-designers are providing stuff for online presence for businesses, if Canva were to succeed, that might eat into the 30% of their cloud subscriptions that were new users not coming from existing Creative Suite purchases.

In terms of broad choices with easy purchase you could look at 123rf. No need to buy subscriptions. I think the selection is good while prices are lower than Shutterstock (where you have the best selection).

FYI in case anyone wants to disable their 500px Marketplace "store" without removing pictures (perhaps hoping they'll see the error of their ways...), you can just make one selection in the Marketplace settings:

https://500px.com/settings/store/settings

logged in to your account that'll get you the choice to "Disable 500px Store. Disable sale of your photos for commercial licensing."

Nice publicity for Stocksy, but it's so closed (so few people are accepted) that I'm not sure how what it does applies to any of the open platforms or marketplaces.

There's clearly some very bad things happening to Uber drivers even as customers love the service; and to neighborhoods when Airbnb is effectively operating hotels in residential neighborhoods. I'm hoping that changes will happen there, but I can't make the connection with the Stocksy model as the way to bring it about

...I'm reporting what I'm seeing across Silicon Valley. Startups and post-startup companies are making some tough decision. There have been a lot of layoffs, cutbacks, pivots and an aggressive push for more revenue...

The difference here is that the people getting scr*wed can (even if they typically don't) empty out the store overnight, leaving the business shuttered.

You might think that enlightened self interest would at least consider that cultivating contributors rather than viewing them as a cost to be minimized might be a strategy for a newcomer to get a foot in the door as they try to get the business going.

And I can and do blame messengers who can't even be honest and straightforward about what they're doing. More than the actions (which are bad enough) it's the utter lack of respect that the stinking pile of corporate-speak represents that destroys any empathy I might otherwise feel. It's just business? That's not an excuse in my book.

...i am not familiar with kelly...

There are many minor quibbles, but the big mess was from September 2010. Here's the MSG thread which has a link to the iStock forum announcement

http://www.microstockgroup.com/istockphoto-com/istock-changing-royalty-structure/

To save you reading through to page 28, here's the link to the 2nd announcement, the one with the classic "But money isn�t going to be what makes you all happy."

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=253522&page=1

KK Thompson at his tone deaf best

...They charge you an annual fee to enter into an agreement to sell your photos at a specified royalty - and then they decide they aren't going to pay what they agreed to? ...

Not quite how it works. You can sell via Marketplace from a free account - there's no connection between the upgraded accounts and ability to sell or the terms under which sales are made. They offer some benefits if you pay them fees (I got my Awesome account for free for a time because I participated in their watermark survey). Even before this announcement, I'm not sure if I'd have paid when the time is up.

Did you try deleting your Illustrator preferences? I believe if those files are damaged it can cause that bevavior

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/setting-preferences.html

Sent from my SM-T800 using Tapatalk

Possibly worth making some noise in the 500px forum and on Twitter. Whether or not it changes their minds, they should get a black eye publicly for being so cavalier about their relationship with their suppliers

https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/711989519671627777

https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/711988696254275584

Jasmin started the 500px thread. My reply to her request for thoughts was:

"Very few printable thoughts

I will stop uploading here for the moment (everything I uploaded was tagged for the Marketplace; that was my reason for joining).

I find the huge cut in royalty rate unconscionable and the explanation threadbare. I am less concerned about the price changes, although I think they'd do better to make a bigger difference between *pricing* on exclusive/non-exclusive content.

As far as financing expansion out of royalty cuts, that's a pseudo explanation that dissolves on contact. When there aren't very many sales and you need funds to build the business, you don't generate funds for expansion through a bigger slice of the still-small pie.

The fact that I've heard just about all these tales before without them coming true at any agency, ever, makes it hard to imagine how 500px Marketplace will be the first to make it happen. There are agencies that have grown and become successful, but they haven't done it by picking the pockets of their suppliers.

I could have understood a message about pricing changes to build the business in the current market. But why would anyone continue to contribute content to an agency that takes months to review images, has few sales and has so little respect for its contributors that it delivers this massive royalty cut message with no meaningful details on what 500px Marketplace is prepared to do for us. It's all about what we can do for them...."

So now it starts.

Just got e-mail that there are reductions in royalty rates for 500px. 60% for exclusive images and 30% for non-exclusive.

New prices $34 for web and $149 for print if it's Core; $49 and $249 if it's prime.

I closed my account with Veer almost two years ago (April 2014) but today I received e-mail saying I'd been paid $17.05 on March 18th.

I don't see anything on PayPal; I don't see any of my images still on Veer (I had checked after I had them close my account but checked again today). I'm assuming it's a mistake, but possibly something came in from a partner site (which begs the question as to why they didn't pay me sooner).

If I don't see anything show up on Monday I write to ContributorHelp to find out

As I mentioned in another thread, I opted out of ELs after the royalty change and earlier had turned down customer support when they offered to process a $22 EL for me.

Today I received another e-mail from support, but this was for $40 royalty, so I said that was fine to process (I'm still opted out; they just process one sale). I then got an e-mail saying the customer wanted another image as well, same $40.

So this seems to work OK for me: if it's below $28 the answer is no; if it's $28 or higher I'll let the sale go ahead. I might miss out on some if a customer doesn't want to bother contacting SS to ask, but I'm OK with that.