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Messages - Hobostocker
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176
« on: February 26, 2015, 10:37 »
and it's not just Getty but also upper-class agencies like Magnum or VII
Remember that Magnum is also a valuable legacy collection - owned by the members or their heirs. It runs more like a family business. And it is a completely different business anyhow - being primarily about photographs. The big stock companies, by contrast, are essentially finance vehicles. Their primary business is finance.
even some top war photographers have barely a pot to pis-s in and are now doing workshops in order to survive.
Established photographers have always often also been involved in running classes and workshops + lecture circuit. Certainly since the early 70s anyhow.
Magnum will never die but if the trend keeps going on like this they will just turn into an art gallery or a museum sooner or later. there's nothing wrong in doing workshops but i'm not sure it's a thing for everybody, even such a top photographer like Steve McCurry (Magnum) had to give up and admitted he's not cut for teaching.
177
« on: February 26, 2015, 10:23 »
Brian May likes them http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8304176.stm
talking about piracy .. among the first results on youtube if you search "Muse" there's a couple of their albums, one of which has 1 million views ?? and the uploader has also the nerve to write this caption : "No Copyright Infringement Intended: All rights reserved to the owners @ Warner Bros. Records & Muse || This is a Non Official Muse Greatest Hits Collection (2014). A non-profit fan made video, for purposes such as criticism & comment, a fair use permitted by copyright statute." oh really  fair use on Warner Bros stuff ?
178
« on: February 26, 2015, 05:09 »
Its funny that young people often think old music is rubbish and older people think the opposite.
hahaha good luck finding a modern band on par with The Who or The Queen ... keep dreaming, young guys, it's a creative desert nowadays.
I prefer Muse to Queen. There's maybe 10 Queen songs I really like, their last few albums didn't do it for me at all.
i've never played Muse songs but since you ask i will now take a quick look ... as for the Queen yeah not their whole portfolio is good but they were able to produce 5-10 songs that will be played FOREVER and ever .. i could go as far as say that the Queen are probably the best rock band ever because unlike The Who their sound is super classic and evergreen.
179
« on: February 26, 2015, 05:03 »
for a monopolist like Getty a loss of 10-20% is no big deal, but it's certainly a sign of the times and of their bad management.
in its defence it must be said that microstock is finally killing the whole industry once and for all so everything we've been discussing here since many years ago is finally becoming reality.
there will be always a stock industry and demand for stock images, just not as well paid and profitable as before ...
as far as we're concerned there's nothing to be happy if Getty goes down the drain .. their gigantic archive will be sold for a pittance to SS or even to Adobe and then all those expensive images will become cheap subs !
once there's no Getty around who's going to pay decent fees to us ? nobody, that's who.
and it's not just Getty but also upper-class agencies like Magnum or VII ... while here we rant and rave about oversupply the reality across the editorial/publishing industry is there's just no F ing demand as in the past and many of the old rich buyers are now bankrupt or in dire straits ... even some top war photographers have barely a pot to pis-s in and are now doing workshops in order to survive.
as i see it, the entire creative world is going to crumble due to the Internet and Digital and Globalization.
it will take 10-15 more years to create a new balance and a "new order" but the golden days will never ever come back.
180
« on: February 26, 2015, 02:20 »
181
« on: February 26, 2015, 00:27 »
they can only blame themselves for destroying the market.
oversupply is just one of the problems, not THE problem.
the real problem is the microstock model itself, first they kill RM agencies selling similar images for a pittance, then because of cut-throat competition they slash prices even more and finally as a last desperate move they sell Subs.
instead they should make a "cartel" like in any other industry and fix prices 10x higher and scr-ew the buyers once and for all.
as long as Stock is cheaper than assignments the buyers have NO WAY OUT and will KEEP buying just as anybody else has no word on the price of cigarettes, booze, food, cars, homes, whatever.
either that or we'll end up like musicians playing gigs for a few beers and earning a pittance with downloads and streaming royalties.
182
« on: February 25, 2015, 22:53 »
Its funny that young people often think old music is rubbish and older people think the opposite.
hahaha good luck finding a modern band on par with The Who or The Queen ... keep dreaming, young guys, it's a creative desert nowadays.
183
« on: February 25, 2015, 22:50 »
well said Pauliewalnuts!!! that goes with all forms of (art)... music, painting, etc
from the toilet bowl to the meat and stripes on the wall they call art
to the crapola that packs in stadiums...
and that is more or less our problem in most case when you are not making enough to survive as an (artist).
then again, you could also have a good businessman to run your show
and still get scr*wed...
ask the piano man Billy Joel !!! he'll tell you all about it.
it's the natural consequence of selling art as a product, of course someone will stick a price on it and scr-ew the artists .. actually the artist in this scenario just becomes a "supplier", as if we were talking of selling trucks of beef or potatoes, no wonder the whole industry is a joke and totally stacked against the interests of the artists and the buyers. the only reason there's an Art industry is that artists have no way to "sell direct" in most of the cases, i mean in 99% of the cases probably, of course a few rich and famous creatives could try unhorthodox ways to profit from their work but it's the exception to the rule.
184
« on: February 25, 2015, 10:26 »
Scam? Hardly. He's just applying traditional sales and marketing methods to art. Scarcity, urgency, and luxury branding rather than bottom dollar commodity. And he does have some nice work but arguably may not be much nicer than some work being sold for $1 in micro.
He's clearly a businessperson first and artist distant second. Which goes to show that with art it may not be the art itself that dictates the price but how much sales and marketing hype creates interest and perceived value.
sure, but promising his buyers that the prints will be worth 100x times more is indeed scammy, it's just a matter of time before they hit him with a big fat lawsuit and his reputation goes down the drain ... he knows that but at this point he's filthy rich and doesn't care, worst scenario he's going back to OZ and live like a king.
185
« on: February 25, 2015, 10:21 »
Throwing in Moma and Magnum is really just an "argument from authority"
exactly. Bruce Guilden (Magnum as well) is the real king of street photography, suffice to say he's the only one shooting a flash in front of his subject and that's a feature of his style, not a bug ... hahahahaha .... watch some of his videos he really knows the score when on the street, i do exactly the same but without flash by the way. Carr is more "artsy" but i'm not a big fan of him, photos should be self explanatory rather than needing the author explain what the photo is all about ... but i understand that's precisely why they like his works.
186
« on: February 25, 2015, 10:13 »
I listen to the first album by Jake Bugg and the 2 La Roux albums a lot. Nothing groundbreaking about either of them and its easy to spot their influences but the music is good and listening to something more recent is refreshing.
Who cares if most of modern music is rubbish? I think there's more music being made now than ever before and even if I only like 1% of it, that's probably more than I have time to listen to.
indeed there's an over-production of music nowadays, too much and who will ever have the time to listen ? i'm sure there are many diamonds in the rough but i won't invest a whole night clicking here and there scouting for talent ... i'm not a DJ and i'm not an Indie label ... it's like if the whole market has been suddenly locked up itself after the 90s, i mean how many pop/dance/rock songs am i supposed to listen ? the umpteenth punk band "inspired" iggy pop or the ramones, the millionth cover of 80s hits ... no thanks ...
187
« on: February 25, 2015, 06:14 »
I think people grow tired of new music because they don't listen to it all the time. Music grows on you, the more you listen, the more you get in to it. How many times have you listened to that old stuff? And there's so much music around now, lots of the good stuff doesn't even get in to the charts. Try these:-
St. Vincent (David Byrne is back)
Mean Lady
Sleaford Mods (not for the faint of heart!)
Metronomy
Lusts
thanks, i will check them out ! and yeah, probably old music sticks with us longer for many good reasons but i can guarantee most of what i'm hearing nowadays is just boring and predictable, i listen a song 10 seconds and i know already what's coming next, and i wonde "F it ... these songs one worth the other all the same like carbon copy" ... again, this has nothing to do with the technical side, actually even the lamest mp3 demo is usually sounding very good and very clean, and if that matter i notice they're abusing FXs like compressors and sidechaining pushing the volume and the harmonics to the max which is not a nice development in my opinion. THE problem facing music today is dealing with it's past : at this point all the major musical genres reached their maturity and are almost rotting on themselves, there's no way out, everything has been done to death in any possible way, every sound has been used and abused, every weird FX has been pushed to the limits, really one wonders what's left to try or to invent ... everybody is waiting for the "next big thing" since 20 years but there's nothing coming out that is radically new, even among the Indie labels that target the most unusual crowds. and personally, having traveled in so many esotic countries i naively expected to "discover" some less known music genres played locally but i was wrong as even most of the folk music here in asia is the same sh-it over and over and in the mainstream there's a flood of cheesy chinese/korean/thai Pop ... India and Nepal are much more interesting in this regard and so is the Balinese Gamelan or the Cambodian Folk and Burmese traditional music and i could list a few other examples but all in all nothing spectacularly "new" or innovative from any perspective, actually it;s very sad since the pop culture here is becoming shamefully westernized with local musicians ripping off western cr-ap like Lady Gaga, i even heard Mongolian hip-hop for F cks sake ... hahaha ....
188
« on: February 25, 2015, 03:50 »
He's got a few bits on Magnum, though goodness knows why, with his snapshots with wonky horizons.
http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL5357TF
He's described on Wiki as a photojournalist and book collector!!!
he's a street photographer and his stuff is great for magazines about society and trends, if you don't like him take a look at Bruce Gilden (Magnum), he's much better. as for Lik : as Carr said, nobody ever heard about Lik before he claimed to have sold his print for millions, not to mention his crazy claims of being the world's top photographer !
189
« on: February 25, 2015, 03:39 »
Its an abomination, Michael Hoppen, a leading British photography gallerist, says of Phantom, which shows a shaft of light entering a canyon. I remember when he sold the picture in 2010, my jaw dropped. I thought, who could be persuaded to part with $1m for a piece of tat? You could have done it with an iPhone.
Ive never even heard of him, Martin Parr, the renowned British photographer, says.
finally some words of wisdom.
190
« on: February 25, 2015, 03:30 »
Hey, if he asks an amount and someone pays it, I don't see how it's fraud. The price is what it is, for what it is.
his buyers are fraudolently PROMISED by the croocks posing as "art consultants" in Lik's shops that the market value of the prints WILL go up as much as 1000% and that they're not buying but making an "investment" and they will go to great lenghts telling them a 3000$ print will soon be worth 30K $ or even 200K $ ! this is a scam.
191
« on: February 25, 2015, 01:14 »
Editorial and press stuff sells well (almost exclusively to British clients)
exactly, photos about the UK.
192
« on: February 25, 2015, 01:12 »
Most of the great musicians of the past didn't make any money until late in their careers and I think they made almost all their best music when they were skint. Its unfortunate that most of them don't get properly financially rewarded for their music now but it isn't stopping them making great music. Listening to a lot of music from the past year, the standard seems higher than ever. They must be making music because they love doing it. If 5% go on to make a lot of money, that's probably not much different to the other arts.
indeed, people will keep playing music even if they get zero financial rewards for it but the whole musical scene will turn into a bunch of hobbyists and amateurs, that's the ultimate result of all this mess. only the few ones backed by the major record companies will have the resources and the time to produce professional stuff year after year. but this means 80% of the hits on radio and streaming and downloads will be mostly cheesy commercial sh-it while the remaining 20% of the market will be made of a few diamonds in the rough produced by fly-by-night Indie labels, that's the way it is already. should i listen forever to lady gaga or beyonce or Jay-z ? no thanks. and in fact i'm not listening music much since more than 10 yrs, and if i do it's pre-90s stuff usually. from time to time i take a look at the new stuff and all i get is the latest horrible cr-ap by lady gaga or Daft Punk or whatever "celebrity" that i couldn't give a F ck about ...
193
« on: February 25, 2015, 01:02 »
Hobostocker, not liking new music is just a sign of getting old. There's always people saying that new music isn't as good as it used to be but they just can't appreciate it. And every generation steals from those that went before them, even the Beatles did it. Here's a few examples http://www.vh1.com/music/tuner/2014-02-09/10-little-known-songs-that-inspired-beatles-classics/
i can tell you a few days ago i had the guts to listen to the entire iTunes top-40 and even the whole Beatport top-100 .. yes one by one ... i spent the whole day on it because i felt i had to "get up with the times". it turns out i liked barely 5% of those songs and in a few cases i almost needed to throw up (Dubstep, Brostep, Trap, HipHop) and lower the volume to preserve my sanity. sure, maybe i'm getting old but maybe this music just sucks despite being mixed and mastered very very good. my impression is producers are totally clueless about what to do next, all they're doing is remixing over and over old stuff and cloning all the top-10 hits in the hope that something will stick on the wall, i mean even using the exact same sounds this especially visible on Beatport. so, is it my fault being an old f-art or today's music is incredibly boring and predictable ? we'll see ... in the meantime i won't play that cr-ap anytime soon.
194
« on: February 24, 2015, 12:09 »
Most of the great musicians of the past didn't make any money until late in their careers ..
Equally much of the world's greatest photography has been done by photographers who were/are essentially amateurs. Or as the unrelated side-projects of people who were also professionals. And every time a new wave comes in via the counter culture it is almost invariably in reaction/against the established professionalism.
sure but there's a big difference in production costs. an amateur can potentially produce gorgeous photos even with a cheap entry level DSLR sold at 3-400$. on the other side to make a song nowadays you need a fast PC, a DAW software, plugins, knowledge about music, mastering, and a LOT OF TIME especially. yeah there's an awful lot of free apps for music also, Reaper for instance is a top DAW and it's almost free, there are hundreds of decent free plugins too ... but again the time needed to master all this is a lot bigger than what's required to make a decent photo in my opinion. the only exception is electronic dance music (now called EDM in the US for whatever silly reason) ... in that case you don't even need to know how to play an instruments and you can definitely use pre-made loops for 90% of the final product ... i've seen idiot DJs even taking pride of that and on top of this very few people noticed it and their "songs" received positive feedbacks .. we've come to this !! but going back to the core issue : YES, with just a cheap laptop and free music software you can indeed make a good song today, i mean at least an instrumental song, the problem arises in case you need to record vocals ... you will need a good microphone, a mixer and pre-amp, at least a minimal home studio, and of course some good headphones or decent speakers + amp ... this doesn't come cheap at all. as for the music itself : sure, technically we're now free to play any possible sound for free at this point, but despite this i see such a decrease in melodic productions in the last 20 yrs, very very few innovative stuff comes out and most of the staff being played is made with the same plugins, the same sounds, over and over again ... there's been almost no evolution at all in most of the music genres after the '90s and this is saddening considering nowadays even a 500$ laptop has all the raw power that in the past would have cost an arm and a leg. everyone was complaining about the sheer complexity and costs of running an analog or digital studio, now you can produce good quality songs from top to bottom on the cheapest hardware and using mostly free software too, so no excuses regarding the technical side .. the issue as always lies in the lack of musical innovation and for this we can only blame the public which has been totally dumbed down and is now unable to appreciate good music after being brainwashed by MTV and Disco and Radios since birth.
195
« on: February 24, 2015, 11:51 »
They are getting what they deserve. Rule number 1: never invest in something you dont understand...
there would be no problem if he just sold his prints for 3-4000 bucks which is already an obscene price considering a limited edition is usually 10-20 prints and he prints 950 ! but no, he want to squeeze the last dollar out of his gullible buyers, selling up to 35000$ and even training his clerks to use the usual well known sales ripoff tricks. but hey, what goes around comes around, sooner or later he'll be hit by a mob of angry lawyers for fraud and his reputation will be finally destroyed, let's not forget that his rich buyers can afford to waste time and money in court, and they will.
196
« on: February 24, 2015, 06:44 »
finally ! Peter Liks Recipe for Success: Sell Prints. Print Money. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/business/peter-liks-recipe-for-success-sell-prints-print-money.html?_r=2"Arguably, the person best versed in Peter Lik comparables is David Hulme, a fine-art valuer based in Australia for a company called Auctionata. For years, he has been getting calls from Lik owners around the world, and he finds the calls depressing. People tell me all the time, Ive been in touch with the gallery, and they say my photograph is now selling for $150,000 a copy, he says. So they want to know what they can sell theirs for. A tiny fraction of that sum is the answer. A subscription service called Artnet which bills itself as the most comprehensive database of its kind captures the resale value of Lik photographs by cataloging auction results, and the most anyone has ever paid for one his photographs is $15,860, for a copy of an image called Ghost, in 2008. (Its a color version of Phantom.) After that, its a long slide down, to $3,000 for a copy of Eternal Beauty (Antelope County, Arizona) in 2014. Fifteen images have sold for between $1,000 and $2,500, and four have sold for between $400 and $1,000. Another handful failed to sell. And thats it." BWAHAHAHA !!!!! Lik is soooo full of sh-it, must be seen (check his ridicolous videos) to be believed, he's fitting like a glove his customer base of illiterate rich jerks.
197
« on: February 24, 2015, 06:35 »
And the sales threads in there are sad to read. People with 33K images whooyaying over 1500$ gross.
half of them being probably similars and duplicates.
198
« on: February 24, 2015, 06:31 »
Generally I think its the same situation in the music industry and in the microstock business.
not yet, because the shelf life of a stock image can last a few years while the music market is so oversaturated that your window of opportunity is barely 2-3 months unless you're famous and backed by the top labels. and while they can do gigs we could do exhibitions, vernissages, and art galleries but that's not the case for us unless we're into fine-art and established into the art market. said that, i still feel better at the idea of earning 0.30$ for a sub than earning 0.50$ for a song on Beatport considering it takes me 1/100th the time to shoot a saleable image. we're still having it a lot better than musicians in my opinion and it won't change anytime soon as musicians are the ones feeling the heat now along with journalists and writers, we're still in a sort of limbo but the industry is getting bigger not smaller not to mention that there's a growing need for imagery on the web while the demand for music is limited to multimedia and videos so it's a totally different ballgame as far as we're concerned.
199
« on: February 24, 2015, 06:21 »
Just for comparison:
yours is an interesting analysis but it's comparing apples vs oranges as stock images are meant to be licenced and their raison d'etre is to be paired into an article, a billboard, a poster, a postcard, a book, whatever, while music is "consumed" in the moment it's being played : users are willing to pay to play music, but nobody would pay to watch an image unless we talk of framed photos in museums. as for Alamy : fully agree, and while they give you 60 bucks you can bet the advertising in the next page earned them 500 or 1000$ ... on SS : yes, but then again it only shows that commercially speaking our RF images are worthless and it's a buyers market, this topic been discussed to death a million times. however, i don't agree we can compare it with "streams" as a users streaming a whole song and paying 0.00001$ for it are actually "consuming" and enjoying the final product while this is not happening for stock buyers, they will always need their designer to edit the image or the layout and blah blah blah ... what we sell is just one of the many ingredients they need to craft their final product, nobody buy our images to just print them out and resell them as postcards or whatever (i may be wrong of course).
200
« on: February 24, 2015, 02:22 »
after a few years of placing files on Alamy, in short, I would say not worth it.
agree unless you literally flood your niche with tens of thousand images, it's very unpredictable what will sell or not sell and far as i've seen their top sellers are mostly about UK and USA so even a giant archive of photos taken in Asia aren't going to sell too much at Alamy while they sell a lot better in other agencies, that's my case and my direct experience so far.
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