Isn't the slice of the microstock pie getting bigger for random microstockers because the factories are moving on ?

yes, at least for a while, but not for long.

there must be an army of copycats and imitators with a big smile in their face now at the idea that Yuri's images will suddenly disappear in a few weeks.

"unfortunately, this is the trend also in many other digital markets, in music for instance they dont even discuss anymore about prices being too low to make a living, they take for granted you can NOT make a living with it !"

The market is quite different - you don't pay more for "premium" content its often less. The music biz now seems to make more from live music I'm not sure there is a photographic equivalent. Some female singer whose name escapes me has just shifted more albums  than the Beatles so doesn't sound that bad!

it's a totally different market and thanks god i've nothing to do with it anymore, actually when i was there we were still printing on vinyl and making good returns, now it's all gone to the dogs.

stock is doomed to stay where it belongs, ironically you've more chances of being discovered by an art gallerist with your images on Flickr or Instagram than on stock agencies.

and art galleries are a whole different mafia too, if you think stock is bad try the art market !

Spending years and years confusing desires with reality could be a personality disorder.

try thinking like an investor.

i would certainly buy shares of SS in this moment, they're doing a great job, they're delivering, they're a solid company.

but what about photographers ? would you lend them some money ? why agencies should pay them more, why with millions of new images per year their sales should remain steady ?

it's obvious, especially in the most competitive niches like business and lifestyle, that the shelf life of new images is getting shorter and that overall sales and going downwards and that the more these agencies keep adding new images the more your portfolio will become irrilevant in the long run.

it's a buyers market now and it can only go worse, sooner or later it will go on par with the other digital markets where now it's impossible for the single artist to make a living.

and actually in some markets they only add new products for vanity or advertising or promotions.
very very few are making money with Beatport or Itunes, and no single authors making a million with their ebook on Amazon.

AOL doesnt even pay bloggers anymore, newspapers pay a pittance for both articles and photos.

dont think stock is an exception, actually it's still paying fairly good compared to other markets, but for how long ?

the reason it hasnt tanked already is because of licencing, model/property releases, and Keywording.
Keywording is the single reason buyers havent moved to Flickr or Instagram ... there are great images there but they cant find them and if they do they probably cant use them due to licensing/release limitations.

so they stick with stock, but it's not gonna work forever.
pricewise the point of non return has been already reached as far as photographers are concerned.
nobody can survive selling subs on SS, and soon it will be impossible selling micro as well, just give it a couple years and you will see.

the only way to make a difference is owning a large portfolio like Yuri does but he's an agency now, he could not do it all alone even working 16hrs a day.

can YOU compete with him ? and if he can't make decent money with that, how will YOU do ?

his departure from microstock is the final signal that this business is no more sustainable for single photographers.

that's the moral of the story, that's why i'm saying "the END of microstock".
the writing is on the wall.

what would be the signal if Warren Buffett suddenly sells his shares in Cocacola and IBM ?
how about Apple shares losing 50% of their value in a few months despite good profits and good sales ?

maybe you guys lack a strategic thinking.

agencies like Stocksy are going nowhere, and people like Bruce have been very very lucky from the start, becoming millionaire by chance without any idea or business model, just because of a lucky strike, sorry but now things have changed big time in the industry.

IS and SS can certainly raise prices in the future, but our slice of the pie will remain the same or become even smaller, they just dont need us at this point, all we can do is double or triple our portfolios just to stay afloat.

so, do you really plan to stay in such a cut-throat business or ... ?

At the time, the big players with high production values were in RM and macro RF, where they belonged.  Buyers who wanted that level of images understood they had to pay a premium for them.  Microstock was for the buyers who just wanted "good enough" at a low price. 

even less than that, it literally started as a designers' forum with free images, and then switching to 1$ images to recover the hosting costs.

yeah, later evolved into "good enough" images, and then to images on par or better than getty.

so now what's the situation ?

that the top seller (Yuri) already smelled the sh-it a couple years ago and launched his own agency and now he's under the wing of Getty.

the end of an era ... as we "dinosaurs" predicted a looong time ago.

micro agencies will keep prosper, but micro as business model for photographer will soon crash and burn.
it will take some time but that's the obvious conclusion if the trend continues and agencies have no reason to double or triple our fees.

the digital market is now all about big volumes, the single artist is just a number, stock is NOT an exception to this logic unfortunately, and it's one of the few markets where you can still make a living actually.

"if microstock was on Nasdaq it would lose 90% of its value in a day !"

Lets see what happens to Shutterstock shares on Monday. If you are that confident you could short sell and make $$$$$$s somehow I suspect you wont be doing that

SS is one of the rare cases where it would be wise to invest long term in my opinion (6-12 months).
they're the only ones delivering.

i dont think SS will lose anything from Yuri's announcement, for each one of his images they have dozens of copycats on sale, it's really a non issue for the buyers.

the issue is for micro photographers.
it's indeed a wake-up call.

agencies will never die, by all means they've all the critical mass to survive, it's the photographers who are paying the price to sustain the whole failed model.

Actually, I don't see this as a repudiation of microstock.  I see it as a repudiation of the factory production model in microstock. 

When microstock began, it was small, individual contributors with low production costs, producing a few thousand images at most.  The appeal was the low cost and the variety that all those small individual portfolios together provided. 

At the time, the big players with high production values were in RM and macro RF, where they belonged.  Buyers who wanted that level of images understood they had to pay a premium for them.  Microstock was for the buyers who just wanted "good enough" at a low price. 

Huge factories like Yuri, Monkeybusiness, etc. upset the balance for everybody, by flooding the micro market with tens of thousands of images that probably didn't belong at that price point in the first place.  And Yuri has obviously discovered that YURI's production model doesn't work for micro.  I expect Cathy Yeulet, Andres Rodriquez, and maybe a few other big factories will eventually come to the same conclusion. 

Perhaps after this period of rebalancing occurs, the market will settle back to mass produced HPV images being sold at high prices, and LPV, inexpensive images by mom & pop producers will once again dominate the micro sites.

the irony is Yuri and other "factories" are the ones who contribute to make microstock famous and by domino effect to "destroy" the old RM model which thanks god is still alive.

no idea if Yuri will stick being 100% RF or he's also entering RM but in any case he's very clear about this being a marketing and business decision and i'm sure it was his goal since launching PeopleImages, why else do you start an agency if not to be distributed by someone like Getty or Corbis ?

all the best agencies are with Getty, it wouldnt make any sense to do it in-house unless you've fat pockets and you know what you're doing but that would be OK for exclusive stuff or paparazzi or reportages, not for stock/RF with models !

i mean what he's selling is very commercial, it's not stuff you sell to Rex Features not it's going in art galleries, there was no other way than Getty or other big distributors and i cant understand why many here are complaining about, it's a business and he's a great businessman, he never pretended to be a great artist and there would be no point being into RF stock if you're an artist.

he's exactly where he belongs now, with Getty, and yes probably other major stockers will follow but since their portfolios are small i dont think they've any chance, PeopleImage has 100K images, that seems to be the minimum to join Getty as an agency unless you're specialized in a profitable niche.

you guys keep missing the bus !

the world's top microstocker just announced he's leaving the boat before it sinks, if microstock was on Nasdaq it would lose 90% of its value in a day !

try to see the situation from a financial and technical analysis perspective, please.

the message is very clear here : he's got his own agency, he's selling his whole portfolio on dozens of different agencies, and he reached the conclusion that he's barely paying the bill considering his production costs and the meagre fees paid by micro agencies.

is the microstock business still sustainable if even Yuri cant stay in biz ? that's THE question, and his answer is NO !

Getty must of paid Yuri a huge amount to do this.  A clear sign to me that they're losing the plot.  They get rid of Sean and pay for Yuri?  Absolute madness.

business is business.

good.

but i wonder how can he live in UK earning 1$ per image.

consider 2000 images per month, 5 days a week, 8hrs per day ... that means 5 minutes per image, 100 images/day, plus uploading the images back to customers, writing emails to customers, eventual phone calls, etc .. all this for 2000$ and he's supposed to pay taxes on that.

it's a hell of salary in places like cambodia or india or philippines but UK ? maybe on par with grilling burgers at mcdonalds.

so the only one left will be .. Lobo ??

hahahaha this is gotta be a bombshell for many guys here.

i'm literally shi-tt-ing in my pants while laughing !

BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!!!!!!!

all i can say ... I TOLD YOU SO ... many yrs i told you so, been banned for telling the truth ... and now your microstock hero Yuri gives up micros and jumps ship on macro RF/RM as he finally realized he couldnt even pay the bills selling 0.5$ subs !

Those of you claiming that iStock exclusivity is about to end, how do you think iStock will survive without it? How will they justify their higher prices?

they dont need to justify anything.

they're in the business of selling stock images, their task is to convince buyers IS is an added value compared to the competition, no matter if because of exclusive content or other marketing BS.

for instance bulk buyers are more interested in subscriptions rather than exclusivity or premium collections.