The truth is somewhere between both articles.  However as junk bonds go Getty is in a bind because their assets are not really all that hard.  Sure they have millions of exclusively owned images but that market is small compared to the entire library and if the suppliers get cut even lower than 20% average then they will continue to leave for greener pastures further eroding the Getty library.

They should spin off iStock and let it go on it's own, I bet that would get a lot of cash in the process. However long term it doesn't make sense.  Getty and iStock are stronger together and the entire imaging stock market benefits from Getty surviving.   No player should get so big as to have all the cards when it comes to the futures of suppliers and Getty got mighty close but those ways need to change in order for it to regain market share.  That means lower prices for clients and better royalty % for suppliers.

In 2007 the full year revenue was $860m   for 2011  $945 million  $879 million for the 12 months that ended Sept. 30  for 2014.

Whatever they are doing is keeping them in the revenue range with decreasing but not off a cliff income.  It's not as if they are earning 50% less even when many suppliers are due to reductions in our cuts. 

It won't go out of business but these articles might help a new buyer get in on the cheap and absorb the debt for pennies.   The most money is done when there is blood in the streets and everything looks dire. That is when the sharks come in and scoop up the pieces and digest them to make a killing later on.

Layoffs and some continued reduced revenue will probably come but not at the cost of Getty the company disappearing.   Shutterstock's stock is way down from it's highs last year of $99.38 it is now $56.55 but it went up too fast for it's own good. It went down even when revenue is accelerating. Speculators have taken it for a ride. 

It will be an interesting year for sure on the direction of the entire stock business.     

I think the bonds look overpriced considering the debt to equity level.  I don't know how the Carlyle group will make a profit from their expensive purchase at 3.3B in 2012.

The company isn't going away as there are always bottom feeders that could shop the company for 2B or less and continue on.  The situation doesn't look good for contributors long term as a company in dire straights will cut even more to stay afloat.    Who will be the new owners? I don't think a spin off IPO will work in this market.

SS will do better
IS Will Continue it's Gettyfication
Fotolia might surprise due to the Adobe integration! However who will benefit?
4k in Video will be emerging stronger.
The $ pie for all of us continues to decrease.
Many full timers will need to get a side job to make ends meet.

I have been transitioning to video for years but I see a saturation and market growth problem in video. It is just not as popular as photo.  You need to use it in a produced piece or video web ad.  Photo probably sells 20:1 compared to video. 

With the 4k transition I guess you could see footage taking off as having stills taken out from video by clients buying it or extracting a frame from the site.   

I have more video than ever but revenue stays the same and sales are inching downward.   

My final guess is that Microstock right now is at a low point in the multi-year sales curve.  Be it reduced advertising budgets and or the recession still holding a grasp in consumerism. We will probably see better times ahead but also tougher times in the short term.  It will be a test of endurance and the ones surviving it will probably be able to reap the benefits.

All in all I think the real future of Stock media is for a search engine like google image search to allow us to list content for sale or on youtube and license it directly. Youtube Stock or Vimeo Stock.   Like direct image sales with some sort of revenue model for the sites but much more favorable for the contributor.

We need a patron St. of Microstock to light a candle and say some prayers.   St. DSLR?   

I think it was that time the truck ran over the power/network lines in Calgary which was more than a day. After that they made redundant servers which supposedly would take care of unforeseen catastrophic physical events which are not code related.

I think they tweaked the code for some new feature/performance patch or set of bug fixes and it broke something essential in the code.

Maybe they added 4k video upload options 

Good interview,  I love the candid explanation of why he had to sell to Getty and how it became to big to handle. Probably the first real answer we have on the subject. 

I wish him and the Stocksy contributors good luck going forward.   Fair payment for the artist is something that should be a cornerstone in this industry.

Here is what I think will happen:

1) Black Diamonds, Diamonds and Golds at IS or other sites that apply will have open gates to upload only exclusive images but also their very best.  So a Portfolio of 3000 images will get to upload 1/10th or 300 images at first.  This will of course have to be done by breaking exclusivity or being non exclusive already.

2) Since it will take some time to get traction it will be pertinent for contributors to spread around and upload their non Stocksy worthy content elsewhere for the foreseeable future. It will lessen the impact while the site grows and will create a system that will be sustainable as it grows.  God knows almost no-one will cease to contribute on other sites until Stocksy is huge.

3) They will build an initial library of a million or so files that will be outstanding and only available there.  The inspection will be brutal and probably will create some discontent but this is a way of attracting customers that only want the best and will not waste time wading thru 99 generic shots to get to that truly special one.

4) Once the site is running and oiled it will probably start accepting more contributors with less track record of sales and will also only accept outstanding files. Silvers, Bronze or Grey canisters will be able to give it a try.

5) By Only accepting the outstanding stuff it will be a one stop shop for clients who want the very best exclusive images. Now That will leave gaps for more generic stuff which might be partially filled in time as they create collections that are lower priced, but there are tons of other sites that will carry these files in the meantime.

6) Vector and Video might be available as options a couple of years after it generates enough traffic. It will need different inspection and much more storage space. Audio maybe in the future too.


My Hopes: Is that contributors will be able to prove their case for images by the download number on other sites and or peer review. We all know what files in our portfolio are the gems and which are the run of the mill stuff.  And we want a good home for the best files, and one that wont give them away on the net.

I also hope that contributors are able to set a tiered price per image which will create a better open market system that earns more for the best files and offers opportunity for buyers to also get files at a lower price. Placing of course a minimum and maximum price by Stocksy so it doesn't scare away buyers or creates a race to the bottom for prices which some contributors will try to exploit by lowering the stuff to get sales.  Maybe a % of slots in low mid and hi price to allocate as the contributor see fit with no chance of unbalancing the sales potential for everyone.

We'll know more soon enough, being based in Victoria BC Canada is a plus, since it will be a better fit for international contributors for tax purposes.

I'm excited and expect to be surprised many times as this progresses.

Saw this: "focusing on high quality, image exclusive artwork."

So on an image exclusive basis which means it can grow along side other avenues of revenue until its big enough to be a primary stop for artists.

Exciting times, punched in my email and tried to join the group.    This is the raft we always talked about and we should embrace it with both arms.

I believe if we only submit the very best shots from our portfolios then we probably have a good chance of creating a killer site quickly with the traffic necessary.  Word of mouth will be automatic.

Video I hope will be in the cards, same for illustration. 

Regarding the iStock sale we only have bits and pieces of what happened and I believe the creditors wanted their cash and Bruce had two options, go Public or sell to Getty. He chose the latter because it was in his view at the time the springboard necessary to get the site to grow while at the same time stay in control for years.

He didn't pocket the 50million he had to pay creditors which I believe was the majority of that share. But as I say we don't really know what happened.  He did stay in the loop for years then came KK which did I believe a good job with the strings that grasped around him.  The Getty machine was in full control and it really didn't matter who was in control.

Yesterday i got all the PP files I had activated 2 years back off that list.  Looking back at it it did more damage than good to sales as it devalued the chances of iStock sales.    Sean and others did make the point back then but I didn't listen.   I was wrong and I'm sorry! The best match had buried those files and I thought it wasa way to get some life back in, not worth it!

So around 800 files less for Thinkstock and or Photos.com to give away.

Count me in with funding when available I have a few images in the MS deal and Google has several dozen. Over 1.1 million downloads in Microsoft alone. At just 10c a piece its over a 100k. 

This is something that should be fought by all of us if we want to survive. 

At 30c a download for everyone involved I bet several lawyers would be salivating for a lawsuit and get a 50/50 split.

Late to the party but read both of these threads for hours. 

My view:

There is a max exodus of exclusives and it may be accelerating. I dropped Video in June and I can easily say it was a good decision on my end now.

They don't really care about exclusive erosion, they are changing the best match to slowly but surely notching that RC system so that most exclusives get 25% and Independents 15%.

We all know that scrapping the RC system is the only way to get any sort of contributor attitude improvement.  It has been made clear that is not in the cards so its a lost cause. 

The Getty model is 30% or 25% depending on the artist deal for the most part so the iStock 35%, 40% or 45% is a fluke by any measure to the Getty system.  They want to fix that bug and I believe they will do it for good.

The sad part of all of this is that it really doesn't matter what they do in the end, the damage is done and the constant influx of files into the microstock model makes for a bleak future for anyone except those that can build a 40%+ of new files every year.

Impossible in my view.

I see 4-5 Agencies surviving after 4 more years and artists getting increasingly diminished returns even with same or greater output to their portfolios.

Artists have the loosing side here as was evidenced these last years when commissions were cut.  The best we can do is produce enough to make the downward slide less abrupt more like a slow down-slope.

Maybe by then we would be in a position to have our content hosted on our own terms with a company just handling the search. Like a Google of microstock, they get 20% we get 80% and there is no curation, we set our prices, we host the content and they just bring the eyes and wallets to it.

IS, VR, SR are extremely useful for taking handheld video at all focal lengths.  So if Video is your focus IS should be on your list.

Interesting thread long read for sure.

I broke video exclusivity with iStock last June.  I have been able to earn a few bucks more than I did then but at the cost of a lot of work getting my clips on other sites.

Shutterstock with the IPO is going to grow the video side according to the Oringer interview at Bloomberg. Hope this brings more exposure, customers and growth to this area.   It can only go up from here IMO.   The uploading process is fantastic and the site performs very good with large previews.  They only need to grow the client base on video.

The pay is 30% which is much better than the 17% I was left with at iStock. Hope things improve and not go down the same path of their competitor. I cant avoid thinking that if Bruce had waited a bit more, iStock would have been self sufficient on its own.  But different era different circumstances.

I wish Oringer and Shutterstock staff/contributors much success going forward.

Quote from: Yuri_Arcurs on July 16, 2012, 21:29
www.peopleimages.com is the result of agencies constantly trying to push commissions down. At some point this happens and they got themselves a competitor instead. If commissions where as high as other platforms (iTunes pays out 70% to their content providers) I would never have dreamed about venturing into this.
This site is purely because of low commissions.

I'm very glad this was the main motivator, things have to change to a fair system of 40 or 50% for the contributor.   Apple pays out 70% because their main business is hardware to run/play that content and are probably not making huge profits compared to their other areas. They know that in order to get the best apps and content they need to offer a good split. Then they can sell you tons of gadgets.

However as long as artists don't respect themselves enough in microstock, we wont be getting a fair commission anytime soon. 

People who are content with less than 20cents a download are plenty and the micros know it. They however will probably be getting mostly crappy content worthy of those slim payouts, littering the search with terrible content which will decrease sales and buyers.

Don't feed the lower commission sites and things will be forced to evolve.

I think Yuri has earned his fame and his clients. He is a hard worker.  And in any interview it is very easy to sound like a pompous deity which may or may not be the intention.

I have seen the evolution of his work over the years and he has upped the level considerably.  I used to find severe flaws in the isolation and other aspects of the images but now its just consistent quality. Thant shows drive and passion not a resting on his laurels approach.  Overhead aside I find him as a role model of this business, same as sjlocke and lise.

You can call Yuri many things but not lazy or untalented.

Something he touched on is the commissions which as we know are pretty terrible on Microstock and probably will continue downward.  What I would like to see is a sense of respect for us artists and our work but accepting low commissions is not helping the cause.

For Yuri Peopleimages.com is probably an escape pod for when the business becomes completely unsustainable for the individual.  Being an agency or selling direct will be the only way to survive in the future without a gargantuan effort of producing images like a factory.

Interesting interview and opinions.

Adding the format seems to be easy, the problems lie in the quality assurance of every file being inspected for good isolation and transparency which in the large pool could be anywhere from perfect to horribly done.   

For 3D renderings its a no brainier, I really cant get around the idea of not using a perfect alpha channel when its clearly available since over a decade ago at even the simplest computer user and installation.

In short, costs money to check these files and they didn't see enough financial benefit in the end compared to the adoption and use by clients.

This comes up from time to time.  The most sold video contributor portfolio Simonkr shoots everything at 24p.   He seems to sell like crazy just surpassing 100k clips.

I am beginning to think that 24p is the better option for the world market right now while 30 or 29.97 is best for North America. 

I mostly shoot at 30p but I am beginning to think 24p is just as good for converting to PAL and or NTSC.   One big aspect to consider is that web video loves 30p as it can also use 15p if on a slower connection.

However portable and digital devices  just don't care about frame rates since they can display them all to 60hz with no problems.

Maybe nature shots work better at 30p while people shots at 24p.    It would be great to have a real graph from sites on what constitutes the best frame rate bet.

Quote from: sjlocke on June 06, 2012, 18:02
Yes, good reading.  I've wondered about the steps one takes to get there in the past.

I think the importance of forcing the launch early was overestimated.  I can't imagine the world would end if people found a dead end for a day ( although we did poke at it here ).

I find that to be the case in web-land.  For some reason site launches are decided in the first week of operation, if it fails most start-ups are declared non viable so the importance of launching quick was probably warranted. This is a Silicon valley thing but it could translate anywhere. The paranoid survive is the motto.

However as a site that will grow and offer a unique set of products Yuri probably has less to worry about and surely not about timing of a few days.  

Yuri, the post is great thanks for taking the time to blog about it all.  Would like to hear more about the story in the future.

I find the reasons why Yuri stopped uploading are more to do with the way his site operates than any altruistic reasons.

One of his exclusive licenses calls for an image exclusivity from fresh uploads.  If the image doesn't sell the exclusivity timed license it goes into the main collection.   Uploading to other sites would create chaos with the structure.

BTW I heard he had an English muffin and eggs for brunch today!

I wish you much success Lucato you certainly have worked a lot to do this...  Hope to hear about your earnings findings on your blog when you have enough data %.

I say support the fair agencies and stop feeding the greed.   

The mistake is thinking that shareholders will be taken care of.  That maybe once was the prerogative of Wall St. but today the banks, brokers and financiers are always first while shareholders have to work overtime to get enough juice to turn a profit if at all.  Not saying this will be the case with SS but I have my share of disappointments in stocks.

In rare cases companies seem to do no wrong like Apple but the higher they go the harder it will be on the shareholders while insiders have already been parachuted out.  Put a price target and get out, don't hold the bag.

When iStock was being squeezed by creditors, Bruce came into the forums and actually asked for opinions.  I remember telling Bruce how an IPO was going to kill IS because the control will be lost to a board and earnings reports that always want better numbers each quarter. He agreed with my point and others views; then other options were explored.

Then he did his visit with Getty and he moved forward with a Getty acquisition.  We all know what that turned out to be...

The only way Shutterstock wont morph into just another publicly run company will be to retain that 51% voting rights internally and just do a segmented IPO to gather cash.   Somehow I think that won't happen.  

Many believe Microstock is imploding and for SS management its a great time to exit.  In the end artists will always stay holding the bag because that is how the business model is structured. We don't make decisions we just accept or deny the terms of agreements.  

I hope this IPO doesn't destroy the good will the company has earned with artists and buyers.  

In the end the capitalist system breeds small companies into midsize then blows them up in the market when they are ripe.  We shouldn't be surprised that a growing company wants to follow what is an established guide to corporate prosperity.  

I have it on good authority that the system is working and video is taken quite seriously. Part of the Video team is at NAB so that might pose some slow down. If you have clips stuck, re-upload them and the server should pick them up within an hour or two.