Unfortunately, my personal experience with Dissolve was anything but positive and professional. When I first heard of Dissolve many months ago I went to check it out. What I found was virtually my entire collection of footage (2,000+) clips for sale on Dissolve for $5 each! Another agency, without my knowledge, had made a lousy deal with Dissolve (sound familiar?).
Granted the lousy deal was the other agencies fault but Dissolve selling my HD clips or anyone else's for $5 was selling the entire stock footage marketplace down a hole!! The other agency responded by raising the prices on my clips at Dissolve to $150 each to accommodate for the lousy royalty percent of a percent deal.
Once I had been notified that the prices had been changed I went back to look again. The prices had indeed been changed but I then found that Dissolve had made one of my clips a free clip of the month. Other agencies do this, of course, but they have the decency to ask first and allow the contributor to choose the clip!
Needless to say I had the other agency remove all of my footage from Dissolve and I was told that I would receive some sort of compensation for the two weeks they had been giving my clip away. I would have been truly surprised if that had come to pass but of course it didn't.
Again, I realize that the other agency was the real dirty dealer here but Dissolves unique selling point of offering HD footage for $5 was/is detrimental to the footage marketplace. It looks from what I can tell like they may have abandoned the $5 clip pricing but if theyve done it once it shows their shady side and they may do it again. All that aside, at this point I would not be inclined to join a startup agency for a crummy 30% royalty rate.
Hello there stockmn,
Thank you so much for your message and please allow me to express how glad I am you brought this up. This is something that a few contributors were affected by and an important part of our history as Dissolve, so I would love to set the record straight.
First of all however, please let me say how sorry I am to hear that your experience back then was such a negative one and I regret you had to go through it.
Having said this, I was around when this all happened. We received a collection from one of our suppliers for distribution on Dissolve. When the agency informed us that their contributors asked for the clips to be removed or the price changed, we did so immediately.
This happened at a time when all we wanted to do was to create the coolest stock footage website for you guys - the contributors - the people we respect and the people we looked so forward to working with - the LAST thing we ever wanted was to disappoint or hurt you or your livelihoods in any way. So that was very upsetting for the Dissolve team.
You are also correct in noting that Dissolve no longer has a $5 tier. In the beginning, we tested various price tiers from $5 to $500 and found that our footage buyers are not sensitive to higher pricing, so we have now positioned Dissolve as a premium footage marketplace. Soon we will be adding a new pricing model that will offer even higher prices than $500.
I understand where you are coming from and I welcome you to contact me directly anytime, if you want to discuss all this in more detail. That's what I am here for.
We have an experienced team and despite how young we are, contributors that had had a similar experience as yours are now contributing directly to Dissolve - we have a great relationship with them and are delighted to be helping them grow their business. Among them are familiar top-tier names that you see on many other stock websites.
Send me an e-mail at
[email protected] and if you wanted to, we can set up a phone call, I would love to have a more detailed conversation about everything if you wished.
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