Quote from: Daryl Ray on March 27, 2019, 09:53

A matter of perspective. If you are on the inside, you just got a 20% increase and better price protection.

With the risk of losing it all in 5 years. Even 1,50 sales. Because P5 will follow the market. With or without exclusive collection. Isn't it?

That's an assumption. You don't know how significant the X collection will be, how many "Arcurs and Andres" types will be involved. Add to that all the clip exclusives that Getty didn't have and the fact that Pond5 IS NOT iStock/Getty. That's important to understand. They are optimists with a plan, others are clearly a pessimists counting the days to the end.

Quote from: ML Harris on March 27, 2019, 00:10

Regardless, it will be interesting to see how this plays out and I am especially curious to see how Getty responds.

Responds to what? That a handful of artists went exclusive on Pond5?

You might want to wait and check the list of Pond5 exclusives before you make assumptions about the impact this could potentially have. Hotelfoxtrot is more than a handful all by themselves, likely representing more clips at a higher quality than everyone posting on forums about this subject combined. The biggest players don't waste a lot of their time chatting nonsense with know-it-alls in forums, so we are not getting the full picture yet.

Artist exclusive is a no-go because we all know what could happen (thanks again, iStock and the people that STILL actually contribute to them). Pond5 has had some missteps in the past year or so, that's true. But a lot of people, and the competitors, might be surprised once this gets rolling. There's a lot of people being nudged over the edge to opening a second X account.

Losing Shutterstock income is the only thing making this a tough call for the average contributor. The $300 sales are nice, when they happen. But they are out of their * minds if they thing I'm gonna continue putting up with the increasingly frequent $1.50 sales. Bailing on Shutterstock completely though, would be a tough call. Maybe a gradual stepping away is best in most circumstances. Storyblocks is all but dead. Pond5 Exclusives still get access to Adobe distribution through the GPP program.

60%, premium prices? No ridiculous hipster popularity contest for entry like Stocksy? Might be the last best chance at as good a deal as we'll ever get. If this goes like they hope, they're going to need that 20% clawback of royalties.

Alamy, who's only role is to host your image and sell it, enlisted another company to do the sale for them and that earned that mystery company 40% of the sale. For some reason, Alamy thinks they are entitled to an additional 30% of that sale, even though they didn't actually do anything. So you, the creator, copyright owner, the one who did all the work including cataloging and keywording, are left with a lousy 30%.

It would be like if I uploaded some of my friend's pictures for him on my Alamy account, and he got his 40% of each sale, but then I took an additional 30% because, of course,  Alamy should be thankful I got them the content, and then we only leave Alamy with 30%. I mean, why wouldn't Alamy would be cool with that? It would only be doing EXACTLY what they are pulling on us.

Why don't they just tell us the lowest price they found across other sites, it'll also help us understand what sites are under pricing and where we can remove content from

Shutterstock: $179/4K & $79/HD
Adobe: $200/4K & $80/HD
Storyblocks: $199/4K & $79/HD
iStock" $50/4K & $50/HD

Bottom Line: Now is a smart time to delete your clips from iStock.

Quote from: Daryl Ray on March 06, 2019, 16:58

Quote from: ShadySue on March 06, 2019, 14:33

Quote from: Daryl Ray on March 06, 2019, 08:31

Quote from: ShadySue on March 06, 2019, 06:23

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on March 06, 2019, 00:03

To be honest the whole Alamy credit control system is a joke and so is the recording of sales which appears to rely on some form of honesty system where the customer reports which images they used.

...they said they'd had changes in personel...

The only changes in personnel needed at Alamy HQ is the management. They have proven their lack of competent decision making at every level. How Alamy continues to exist in 2019 is beyond comprehension, dumb luck I suppose. No regrets about severing ties with these clowns.

Who do you think more worthy of keeping ties at?

Companies that aren't compete idiots about image review, that can handle communication civilly, and that actually make somewhat regular sales. Companies that can actually pay their contributors their share in a reasonable amount of time (when the honest customers choose to report their purchases and pay, considering Alamy is using some sort of freaking "honor system" that their customers are clearly taking advantage of). Companies that don't force us to do all sorts of extra work doing reverse image searches and sending multiple emails on our end making sure they aren't complacently giving away our photos, only to heavily discount those sales or pretend they happened after the 20% royalty cut, just to screw us even further. Pretty much every other company does everything they do better than Alamy does.

Don't get me wrong, we are all in a desperately short supply of bonafide honest, fair, and competent stock companies. Mostly by our doing since so many allow the worst ones (ie iStock) to continue ruining the industry. Alamy could be so much better, but they need to get management that aren't shockingly incapable of making any correct decisions.

Yeah, yeah, I get all that. For me, it's just a matter of different people being willing to put up different sorts of cr*p. I'm not convinced any of them are much better than the rest, when you take everything together into consideration (I mean in the micro universe, not talking about macros).
I really wanted to know which specific companies you think are better than Alamy.

Completely agree with you. To answer your question, it's the top companies that barely pass the grade. MSG top tier, minus iStock. But yeah, they all suck in their own way. "Better" than Alamy? Yes and no. It's just that Alamy is just so terribly bad at everything they do that it's just a matter of principle at this point, for me anyways. Shutterstock and Adobe pay too little to contributors, of course, but they get basically most everything else right, aside from the obvious lapses and shameless greed. Lesser of the evils, as they say. Even Pond5 is losing their cool these days. This business sucks and it's getting suckier. We are being marginalized and not doing ourselves any favors rectifying the situation.

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on March 06, 2019, 00:03

To be honest the whole Alamy credit control system is a joke and so is the recording of sales which appears to rely on some form of honesty system where the customer reports which images they used.

...they said they'd had changes in personel...

The only changes in personnel needed at Alamy HQ is the management. They have proven their lack of competent decision making at every level. How Alamy continues to exist in 2019 is beyond comprehension, dumb luck I suppose. No regrets about severing ties with these clowns.

Quote from: Daryl Ray on December 18, 2018, 12:52

Quote from: Pauws99 on December 18, 2018, 11:38

"If you can't run a microstock company splitting the sales 50/50, you can't run a company." How many microstock companies actually do this? For years SS have said that a 33/66 split in their favour is the sweet spot. We may not like it but a lot of companies have failed trying to prove them wrong. Contributors generally vastly underestimate the importance of marketing and its cost in my opinion. It may be unpalatable but thats the reality in my view.

Buy into the bs all you want, most companies take as much as contributors allow them to. Marketing, content management and payment processing is ALL they do. They don't create content, they don't pay for content, they have zero reasoning to take more than 50% as a sales commission to do their part in this business. iStock set the tone and many others followed suit because you guys keep feeding them content and choose to believe their "exiting news" press releases over common sense and logic. As for SS, I personally don't trust an assessment on an appropriate split from an agency that chooses to spend top dollar on lavish offices in a ridiculously high rent location and has an obligation to their executives and shareholders to constantly increase THEIR bottom line.

The long standing and continued success of Pond5 is all the proof we need that 50% is plenty to run a company efficiently. It's right in front of you. Believe in whatever reality you choose.

The reality is the top three  agencies by a mile all offer 35% or less payout. That's the reality not my belief. Yes they are  businesses so need to show a profit thats how it works. In 2017 SS revenue was 557.1 $m. Pond5s is estimated at $5.6M

They pay 35% or less because they can and people will still upload to them. You're not understanding my post. If their sole motivation is increasing their profits quarter after quarter, who do you think is going to be getting the decrease? Where do they "find" more profit? You and me. Showing the difference between the revenue of the different agencies actually further illustrates my point. SS takes 70% (probably more with the sub deals), so that comes to approximately $389 million in commissions from sales of things they didn't pay a cent to create, ship or purchase. You're telling me that $228 million (50%) wouldn't be enough commission to cover their costs to host digital files, process payments, pay staff and maintain (poorly at times) a database? I guess it isn't if you overpay ridiculous amounts for real estate and executive salaries. Somehow, Pond5 does it all with $2.5 million...

First off, as in the title of this thread, we as contributors should really stop the continued misuse of the word "commission". A commission is a fee paid to a salesperson. We are the creators and owners of Alamy's content, the stock companies sell our content on our behalf and THEY make a commission on those sales. I would bet a months income that iStock came up with that little switch in definition. Giving a measly 15% "commission" to a contributor somehow sounds "better" than calling it what it is, an 85% commission for the sales people. The most accurate way of describing the Alamy move is that they gave themselves a 20% raise in their own commission.

"most of the expenses are the salaries and then the maintenance of 155M images" - I'm not buying that maintenance excuse for the cash grab. Tell that to Pond5 and their 22M images, along with their 13M videos, not to mention SFX, music, AE templates, PSD, illustrations, 3D. The nearly 5 million 4K video collection maintenance alone surely dwarfs any hosting costs Alamy has. Yet, Pond5 can still muster up a 50% split and survive. And somehow Pond5 is also able to review each submission, file by file, whereas Alamy barely glances at one image in each batch. Throwing out good content in one batch and blindly accepting garbage in the next.

Salaries, that may be an issue. But it's not our problem if they want to pay themselves such high salaries that 50% earnings off content that cost them zero to create can't cover, just as our equipment and production costs are not their concern with how we spend our half. If you can't run a microstock company splitting the sales 50/50, you can't run a company. And that was the only real positive thing Alamy had going for them. Pond5 is clearly hustling way harder than Alamy, evident in my experience at least, so they seem to know how to use their 50% effectively. Alamy, it's employees and contributors, would be better served to replace their poor management. They are the ones failing everyone involved. Then maybe "salaries" may not be as much of an issue.

No, this doesn't make Alamy anywhere near as bad as iStock, or even Shutterstock or Adobe when it comes to money splitting. But with all their other flaws, it surely takes them from barely relevant to pretty much irrelevant. We should always resist these kinds of negative changes and make them as uncomfortable for these companies as we can.

This is nothing new, unfortunately. Others do this as well, just more subtle. They can favor or handicap individual contributors by assignment of some kind of rating system. Years ago, a curator let it slip during a back and forth discussion. "This can negatively affect your contributor rating." was warned. Definitely seems a little conspiracy-ish at first, but it makes sense that they'd have a way to weigh portfolios of their choosing how they'd like to.

My guess is that Shutterstock has their own "contributor ratings" system and someone got greedy or cocky when assessing Mr. Crossroads here. Chances are, this was no hack or mistake, Crossroads is likely a Shutterstock employee, an associate of one, someone a SS staff member wanted to give a bump to, or just a buyout deal of now 100% owned SS content. Reasoning is irrelevant though, we can clearly see the result.

It's not a conspiracy, its a company doing whatever they want at the expense of those that created everything that made them wealthy. Look at their swanky Manhattan offices, these guys don't give a f***. Look at how terrible iStock has treated their contributors, and how an embarrassing number of you still willingly and openly support them. Why wouldn't these companies push the envelope and see how much we'll take?

Look, I may have just caught the wrong rep at the wrong time. Has it been James or whoever you guys get, I would have agreed with all the positive rebukes and never made this post in the first place. But, I stand by "petty" and "easily offended" when that is how my direct private experience with them has been. I'm glad to hear many others experience much better than I have. I concede that "vindictive" may not accurate, an astounding coincidence with the timing and scale, but sure, coincidences happen. I retract that, for what it's worth.

"whining", "ego-tripping", "drama".  Throwing childish, unprovoked insults at one another probably discourages more agencies as well as contributors from posting on here than agency reps choosing whether or not to defend honest criticism.

Thanks for the reply, James. But you have to agree, punishing a otherwise good contributor 3 or more ways for adding one iPhone image to an otherwise fine batch is overkill, no matter how you explain out the individual reasons. There's clearly a flaw in the process. I asked for clarification, and now my sales are currently in the longest gap in 2 years. I can't possibly know why for sure, but that's some severely coincidental timing.

I do appreciate your response here, however. Had my follow-up questions not been ignored and my sales not suddenly stopped cold, I would have liked to keep this between myself and Alamy. I felt like had little else to do about the situation than post a caution here.

For further clarification, Pond5 does offer 50%, and I frequently get much less than 50% from Alamy sales due to the distributors cut being larger than mine.

Thanks Mike, you get points for posting anything here. And your claims of past and current efforts to stop this crap is nice, but you didn't really tell us what we wanted to know and need to hear.

1. You did not confirm whether or not these acts of fraud resulted in the criminals downloading our content before the "refunds" occurred, leading us only to speculate that our content was indeed stolen and now in the possession of these criminals for their illegal distribution, at their will.

2. You say we need to contact your team directly in case any of us happens to discover what will soon be multiple pirate sites that will be inevitably profiting off our content due to your security lapse (which also hints you know the content was downloaded). Mike, you got this very wrong, Videoblocks needs to proactively seek out where this content shows up and take action with or without us initiating anything directly with you. It was YOUR responsibility to protect our content and your team failed. The correct course of action in this situation is for Videoblocks to take the information it has, including IP's & lists of the stolen content & anything else, and to put serious effort into dealing with it, now. Lawyer up, hire investigators, contact authorities from the relevant countries, GET IN FRONT OF THIS.

Your claims of improving "fraud detection and prevention over the years" and what you're doing to prevent this in the future does nothing to address the damage already done. 

The educated and experienced photographers above obviously know how it works. However, that's just not how it should work, IMO.

For example, with a building that has strict protections on uses of it's design, you cannot take an isolated image and "sell it". But if it is part of a skyline among many buildings, it's inclusion should in no way be an issue. No one should be able to make a skyline unusable by adding their building to it, that would be ridiculous. Same with graffiti art. An isolated image of an artists work cannot be photographed and then resold via stock, that makes sense. But if an otherwise perfectly commercial image happens to include a spray-painted tag by some idiot, that should not render the entire image unsaleable. That gives an ridiculous amount of power to vandals (but that's the way Shutterstock handle's it, of course).

Same should go with tattoos. You cannot photograph a close-up of tattoo and then sell that image like your own without a release, that's not acceptable. But, if you have images such as chrisphoto has, it's ridiculous to require property releases for partially covered and nowhere near main subject tats.

And if in any of these cases, a buyer edits the picture down to just the copyrighted/owned/trademarked element, well that's among the things that the buyer should be ultimately responsible for.

Unfortunately, the real world vs how it "should" be are two different places.