As for creatives... The pendulum will never swing back. Long gone are the days of so called partnerships. Believe it or not the old contracts were very simple, the contributor creates the work and the agency markets and sells the work, the agency represented 'you' and 'you' were proud and gave it all your best. Let's not forget that once upon a time most if not all stock agencies the deal was 50/50 then is slowly eroded to 60/40... the rest is history, we now accept $5 for giving our work away for free by a corporate and accept 0.10c for a download.

The current structure in this digital world is not for the benefit of the creator rather it is for the benefit of the publicly traded corporation.

The stock industry is consolidating faster than I thought only a few years ago. I think most players are irrelevant already that were still on the radar not so long ago.

Small players are already totally wiped out and sending anything to them is a huge waste of time and an opportunity that your content lands in the wrong hands. Middle tier have also mostly slipped down. Alamy 123RF, Dreamstine,Envato,Deposit are a shadow of what they were and in a few years will join the low ballers if they aren't already.

Now the "big players" that are competing as hard as never before even if it means for some of them trumping their relationship with contributors:

The 800 pound gorilla has shrunk to a baboon with a red and ugly ...... Still on the top list but falling every month. I remember when the exclusive number was around 300 (earning rating on the right). Very soon that number will be under 1 agency where you don't need to be exclusive. Their 15% has made many people loose interest. Less content less buyers.

Shutterstock: Well they lost their leadership a few months ago and will keep falling. Many demotivated people have already abandoned them and this trend will persist. Thy still have a lot of content but others are taking the throne fast.

Pond5: They are only a player in video but I think they will be part of the leadership group in this area for a while. I wish they could get stronger and also make a dent in the image department as I think they are by far the most fair agency to contributors.

Adobe: Climbing steadily and killing competition slowly but without merci. I think they are the ones that could turn the whole market upside down if they wanted killing all competitors in a few years. Make file exclusivity happen (50-55%) accept editorial, and start footage subs and Shutter and Istock would be history very fast. A couple of years and they would be gone. Getty/Istock probably bankrupt.

Other more selective or niche players like the few RM or premium agencies left will still survive offering specialized content that is not available on the micros.

In any case if Adobe does not make major mistakes it will be king of the hill by far in 2 or 3 years.

That's how I see it. The post pandemic world is changing many variables so I could be wrong but it will be interesting to see the final check mate when it happens.

The key is to do it as a group. Join forces with the stockcoalition.org for example and get all the people that is deleting their portfolios from SS and make a stock site where all contributors get shares. Like a Cooperative so all the revenue goes to contributors.