I'm genuinely surprised by the low figures from Shutterstock and Pond5 this January. Considering their business practices, I can't help but wonder if they might be manipulating the numbers or hiding sales�but is that even possible?

I'm experiencing a drop of around 70% compared to the same month last year. Is anyone else noticing something similar?
 

Not here. Slightly up for SS in regard to last year around this time. IS doing well also. It's Adobe who is lagging substantially for me.

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.

Exactly that. Stock is just a minor part of operations for Adobe. As a user of their apps I get spammed using AI and using photos that I can I adjust with all these new features they have. Remove something, add something, add a person, change the background, change the sky.
In the end the buyer doesn't need an AI generated photo by a contributor, they just need a good base to start from and add whatever they like with just a few clicks.
And those people that hold the Adobe subscriptions, to whatever the product they sell, are their clients not just the clients who buy ready to use images for copy and paste.

on the adobe stock community forum they say:
"Adobe's Buyers have been requesting this change since the advent of AI in the database. Some have threatened to cancel their Adobe Stock subscriptions because they don't want to have to sift through AI assets to find what they need. I suppose some followed through on that threat. This gives them a quicker way of accessing the Filter Panel. If Buyers are looking specifically for AI assets, they can still quickly find them."

Seems like a poor judgement call then from Adobe to clutter their database with this AI rubbish. And they put so much work in it to get it there. Apparently customers are not keen on it. Ouch...

Given the situation (look at the stock prices of both companies for the last year) it is not a choice but just a matter of surviving regardless their different cultures. This will keep them afloat for a while. Like other people said some small niche companies will survive but there is no room apperently for three big companies (the market is too small). Adobe will let this new venture stay alive because of anti trust legislation so that may in the end be beneficial to us. No lower prices and maybe, really maybe, more money for us.

Quote from: SimonSays on January 10, 2025, 13:02

You must be a very compassionate human being. Living in Ukraine and getting so symphatic with people in Los Angeles. They should reward you some price.

There are very good people in Los Angeles who help Ukraine a lot. Also, the US is Ukraine's main ally. Therefore, Ukraine is not indifferent to the problems of the US.

Oh, ok, I thought mainly democrat people were living in LA, but I may be mistaking. Isn't a red state for like forever?

ps:
And that way it's cheaper than having a PS + LR subscription with a seperate Adobe Premiere license which I need as well. Unfortunately there is no package that binds those three together. But you have to lose the Premiere for at least a month or so to get the offer for the all apps plan again.

Thanks all for the feedback! Doesn't seem to be a structural thing then. I don't sell that much, around 80 downloads a month at SS. But normally, at least a third comes from the US and now for a month nothing. I will see how it goes in January to see if it was indeed a fluke or not.

Quote from: JustAnImage on December 18, 2024, 08:34

And the message from Getty/IStock says �Training share: 50% of the revenue is split across all files used to train our AI services, with each file receiving an equal share.�

Quote from: SimonSays on December 19, 2024, 16:07

You get your share, be it 15% as non-exclusive or 25-45% as exclusive.
....
Is a total of 0.00003/2 multiplied by your 15%=0.00000225 as overall factor

SimonSays, These thieves should multiply money by 50% and not by 15%. As they promised.

They should fire the communication officer of doing a bad job. But they did as they told but did not explain it well enough so people could understand and then get different ideas about it.

Quote from: zeljkok on December 18, 2024, 17:42

Quote from: Uncle Pete on December 18, 2024, 17:25

Here's my answer, like the drones in New Jersey, which aren't drones, but mistaken identity or ordinary UAVs, this is 100% conjecture, from what I've read. Translated, that means I might be imagining things or I could be right? Or none of the above.

Training share: 50% of the revenue will be divided between all of the files used to train our AI Services, giving an equal share for each file. This rewards every file that was part of the value created by our AI Services in each year.
Weighted share: 50% of the revenue will be weighted to each file in the training set, based on the royalties that file earned from traditional licensing in the same year. This rewards the proven commercial value of your content in each year.

50% plus 50% = 100% Half will be an equal share of the money, received by Getty, for each file. Half will be based on royalties that the file earned, in the same year. That's for each of our files or each of our files that were used, that also had sales.

50% plus 50% = 100% and we get 15% of that total amount, the 100%, for images. A further guess is video gets 20% of that 100% if the files used for AI training are videos.

They probably had meetings and committees that met and studied for months to come up with this. 

Until someone comes up with the real answer, from support, or finds a better made up version, that's mine. We get 15% of that 100% and Getty keeps 85%

What you wrote is almost as convoluted as IS platform ;=)

That's why I think I understand it? 

Real simple and straight. The number we see for the CONNECT SUMMARY STATEMENT

Summary of Connect-based revenue by customer and product.

AISERVICES United States
##.## is the License fee
Commission = varies
##.## is what we get. (mine was just over 15%)

The second AISERVICES for location says "varies" then License Fee Total, Varies for Commission, and the number we are credited. (mine was just under 15%)

So the numbers for AISERVICES are the 100% and we get, around 15% of that.

The whole 50% of each file and 50% of each file that has downloads, is just mystical, magic, Getty math, and irrelevant. They pay us a roughly 15%, just like everything else.

I agree. The 100% is the money they say they made. You get your share, be it 15% as non-exclusive or 25-45% as exclusive. Your part is calculated (before your percentage) as 50% of the files having been used for the dataset and the other 50% as the weighted factor of how many files you have licensed of those files during that year.

So let's say:
They made 10 million with these datasets.
You had 1000 files used
There were 100 million used in total
You had 200 sales of your used files in that year
There were 10 million sales of used sales in that year
You are non-exclusive (=15%)

Then your share would be:
1,000/100,000,000=0.00001 for the 50% file share factor
200/100000=0.00002 for the 50% license share factor
Is a total of 0.00003/2 multiplied by your 15%=0.00000225 as overall factor
Then total revenue of 10 million multiplied by your factor of 0.00000225= 22.50 USD