Hi all,
Are you also experiencing extremely low revenue on Shutterstock?
My revenue is down 5-6 fold. It's a disaster.
Review times also became catastrophic. I am uploading vectors and I have to wait around 24-36 hours for my files to get reviewed.
So, despite my regular uploads, my revenue is going down each day.
How are your Shutterstock portfolios doing?

Sales and in particular earnings per download have gone down the past three months, but like thx9000 said, February has been a disaster with almost nothing but 10 cent commissions for images and $1.00 for videos.

I think Shutterstock's toxic management has likely seen a number of higher quality contributors stop uploading and / or upload elsewhere to places like Adobe, and consequently higher paying customers have naturally moved to where the fresh better content is available. My Adobe Stock port has seen a significant increase in downloads and revenue, as has many others.       

Yes, SS is a disaster.  I suspect they probably gave up on their business. 

Level 5 on images and Level 3 on videos but for this month I see a decrease in high earnings but records number of downloads.

This is my 6-month trend for SS.  Pretty much like a nosedive.

That's impressive you still made $3,500/month just a few month ago with mostly videos on SS.

For downloads, I'm tracking at about the same level as last year which isn't great because I added 30% to my portfolio since then. I would have hoped to have more downloads. Feels like I'm working hard to stand still.

However, for revenue, I'm doing a lot better than last year .. at  least so far.

SS used to be my best earner, now it's second last.  Freefall coincided with start of new payment scheme couple of yrs ago.   Oddly enough for Feb '24 SS is looking to be #1 (ahead even of Adobe).

I don't think SS is dead, or will be anytime soon, but certainly appears far from where it once was.

SS used to be my best earner, now it's second last.  Freefall coincided with start of new payment scheme couple of yrs ago.   Oddly enough for Feb '24 SS is looking to be #1 (ahead even of Adobe).

I don't think SS is dead, or will be anytime soon, but certainly appears far from where it once was.

Do you sell video? And if so are you still seeing any high(er) priced video sales?

^This is where I'm seeing the biggest earnings collapse. 

Level 5 on images and Level 3 on videos but for this month I see a decrease in high earnings but records number of downloads.

There was a time when we weren't so far apart in terms of numbers. You've been working hard since then and are obviously being rewarded for it. Congratulations on that and well deserved.

I admit that I wouldn't have thought such an increase as yours was possible. So it's really interesting to read that it's possible.

My personal answer to the question "Is shutterstock dead?" is now yes. Which is also self-inflicted due to a lack of diligence. But since the new income structure, I lack all motivation.

20K clips - 280$ so far in February, last year around this time in February it was 3000$+ what�s going on?


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20K clips - 280$ so far in February, last year around this time in February it was 3000$+ what�s going on?


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That is indeed more than frightening! Incredible!

 

20K clips - 280$ so far in February, last year around this time in February it was 3000$+ what�s going on?


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That is totally frightening.

And mirrors the complaints on pond5.

Where are the customers buying now? Especially where are they buying editorial content?

January was very bad. Revenue was only 28% of the revenue in December.
But SS revenue is significantly higher than AS and P5 revenue every month.

February is already looking much better. Got another nice $150-surprise.

I think SS is not dead but very much alive.
P5 is showing signs of dying in my opinion. Had 60% less revenue in 2023 compared to last year.

Yes some are making more in Adobe stock because AI is permitted but the AI models are evolving so fast that in no times customer will no longer need to look into a library. Not a second. They will generate what they want and with tons of option, styles etc. Video will take only a little longer to follow that path but as we saw with SORA just a few days ago it is arriving faster than I thought.

It is a total game over for all stock producer. This will no longer exist in 5 years at most.

Will be as easy as to type and search into a library with Ai images. The advantage in library is that all there is a curated collection for which someone spend his time to generate, select the best and edit, then on second level curated from the agency side. I wouldn't bet on Ai generation over curated Ai collection, but who am I to tell, for example Shutterstock bet on Ai tool exclusively and they are recently "extremely successful"

20K clips - 280$ so far in February, last year around this time in February it was 3000$+ what�s going on?


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I'm scared and shivering.

I honestly think that my work deserves 3000$ on a February at Shutterstock. 8 years into stock, nice portfolio, SS used to be the god of stock for me for years. A switch was pulled on my portfolio and for many others, making way for fresh clips I assume, even though I try to shoot timeless subjects.


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the AI models are evolving so fast that in no times customer will no longer need to look into a library. Not a second. They will generate what they want and with tons of option, styles etc.

I think there will always be a demand for editorial photos.

Shutterstock's quarterly report will be out tomorrow.

Very mixed bag, but their stock is down this morning (more than the overall market). Depending on which statistic you focus on you could talk up the successes or bemoan the falling short. Can't fathom why they are highlighting targets for 2027 - unless it's to distract from less desirable things between now and that glorious future

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shutterstock-nyse-sstk-misses-q4-121001195.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shutterstock-inc-sstk-reports-mixed-123416222.html

In their statement section on Q4 FY 2023 financial "highlights" everything was a decrease from Q4 FY 2022!. Fewer subscribers and fewer paid downloads too (35.4 million vs 42.5 million)

https://investor.shutterstock.com/node/13506/pdf

There is a lot of interesting stuff in there.

They greatly increased their income from data licensing, that went up 256%. So their ai data licensing plan is going very well.

Their income from stock decreased, but not drastically because they were able to increase the average money they get from customers.

But they did lose subscribers and in the last quarter their number of downloads was just 35 million instead of 42 million downloads in the last quarter of 2022.

That is a drop of 16%.

What I also find interesting is the number of assets in their library.

photos/illus grew from 719 to 771 million files 22 to 23.

Videos grew from 47 million to 54 million.

So in the entire year SS only added 7 million videos and 52 million other files.

Isn�t that less than half of what they used to get? Does pond get only 7 million videos a year? Or Shutterstock?

I remember that SS used to get more than 2 million files a week.

If these numbers are correct, they are getting a lot less content than before.

Does anyone have old statements to compare that?

For 2024 they expect the business to be steady.

eta

further down this report they show the growth of assets

images grew from march 22 to march 23 from 471 million to 731 million.

but by end of dec 23 it only grew to 771 million.

for videos it grew from 25 to 48 million march22 to march23 but for december 23 they only show 54 million a much slower growth.

So they are getting a lot less content than before. Obviously producers are not happy with the reset rat race system and the loss in income and sales.

Will be interesting to see next quarters library size.

eta2

so if the adobe library is growing normally PLUS they have a beautiful 40 million strong ai collection�then as a commercial use customer Adobe will look much better.

So it is not a surprise many customers are switching.

I also wouldn�t be surprised if there is also a big difference in the quality coming in.

Which at some point will affect the ai licensing deals, adobe and getty can do them as well.

@Cobalt:
Thank you for listing some very interesting data!

The strong growth of the database seems to be declining massively and that is not surprising from our point of view - every year the download race starts anew and we earn little in the first quarter - conversely, the Q1 results at Shutter should actually be better than in the other quarters.

I have contact with some of Shutter's customers and they have been very dissatisfied with the quality of the material for a year or more now, and they also complain about the search because they can no longer find what they are looking for.
So I immediately believe that subscribers are being "lost".

The AI income is currently still a kind of "salvation" for Shutter, but if the number of new images no longer increases so much and less and less good material ends up there, then Shutter will slowly but surely do away with itself.

I wouldn't mind, because what they've done with us contributors fits in very well with this endless spiral of greed.

Have a sunny day,
Michael

These figures really stand out as pretty bad:

Fourth Quarter 2023 as compared to Fourth Quarter 2022:
Income from operations decreased 72% to $2.1 million.
Net income / (loss) decreased 114% to a $1.0 million net loss.

They can always increase their own profits by cutting payments to producers even more. On Getty the lowest paid is 2 or 3 cents.

And if they add the exclusive pond5 content to the SS subs plan, many customers will return or they will get new customers.

They will keep getting uploads and if their main focus is ai, is high quality content even needed for licensing?

Perhaps the initial batch with lots of high quality content is enough to establish a baseline.

And if they need fresh high quality content they can specifically order that from stock factories.

So, at least for a few years, even if the sales from the stock business goes down, the datalicensing can probably keep them going for quite a while.

eta

perhaps someone can dig more into the numbers, what if they made 300 mio from selling stock but 700mio from data licensing?

a combination like that might be more profitable and require much less staff.

as long as ss brings in more money than dreamstime or deposit, they will get content.

eta2

I would not be surprised if this years exciting news is that all p5 exclusive content that has not sold in 3 years or that has never sold, will have the wonderful opportunity of getting additional earnings opportunities via ss subs program.

Cook the frog slowly and most people will stay.

They are dead and we will see their stock value plummet in the next 2 years. Same will happen with getty. They don't stand a chance against Openai or Google Gemini. It's over for the stock sites. Even Adobe I doubt will be able to compete with this huge players.

They can always increase their own profits by cutting payments to producers even more. On Getty the lowest paid is 2 or 3 cents.

And if they add the exclusive pond5 content to the SS subs plan, many customers will return or they will get new customers.

They will keep getting uploads and if their main focus is ai, is high quality content even needed for licensing?

I am quite sure that in at most 2 years only a 10% of the subscribers will remain in Shutterstock or the other sites. We will see . it does not look good for them. When SORA will be out it will be the final blow.

From the report:

Subscribers: 523,000, down 63,000 year on year

Income from operations decreased 27% to $68.4 million

Operating cash flows decreased $17.9 million to $140.6 million

.......

It seems they're maximizing their profits as much as possible. Yet, if subscribers start to leave, I question the bright future they're promising.

If this is the new normal for Shutterstock (and I really hope it isn't) then this imho is a collapse of the agency in terms of its revenues from image and video sales. I'm astounded at the depth and velocity of its fall but maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. It's predictable.

• First, you slash contributor earnings for a quick profit boost
• You fully decentivize your main contributor base
• Your bulk of quality contributors stop uploading - and instead upload their fresh quality content to other agencies (your competition) that treat their contributors with more respect
• A large segment of your customer buyers and subscribers just naturally follow the better, fresh, quality content where contributors are uploading
• Your sales, revenues and profits drop.

If this trend continues then I suspect the next quarterly report will show the depth of the damage done from this fallout with contributor and customer alike. Shutterstock actually has itself in a bind now. Won't be able to take another razor to contributor earnings again as this will just make the problem much more worse than it already is. Instead will need to find new markets and customers and might like to consider restoring some incentives to contributors given the lack of volume and quality of new uploads.

While I agree with what you wrote, there's a point that many people here are missing.

SS has diversified into other areas. They don't rely on just Microstock for earnings and income. Some day, the whole Microstock division could go away, and it wouldn't matter to the overall profits of the corporation. They won't care about our earnings or what we do as artists.

I know people here care and we're at the mercy of the agencies, but if the customers go to Adobe, and SS has much more profitable business gains in AI, news, or whatever else they own and do, they won't care about a division that's losing money. If it's too expensive to operate and unprofitable, they could shut down stock photos, as a cost cutting, expense reduction, initiative.

We shouldn't assume that there will always be a Shutterstock, as we know it, or as it was founded. The whole idea of Microstock could be dead in five years, except for some bottom feeders and the last successful agencies. Adobe has the CC to support this area. Getty is a stock photo agency and that's their market. SS? They could go into other new areas, and drop stock photos as their main interest. Maybe they already have?

I think the question is not if ss dies, but if selling stock assets will still be a major focus in their future business.

SS might totally thrive expand and grow with their new ai business and everything else they do.

But people here are concerned about what effects them - will SS and pond5 continue  to have sales?

And the numbers show that the volume of sales is dropping strongly. And they seem to have lost 50% of their previous upload numbers. Which means many of the producers who often are graphic designers and media artist have shifted their attention elsewhere.

So perhaps this is the start of a new, fantastically successful SS, but as uncle pete pointed out this does not mean that selling microstock will grow or even be a strong focus of what they do.

You can always buy the ss shares if you believe in their plans. Maybe that is a better way to make money than uploading, who knows.

� I�m pretty scared, because it is actually pretty good for February� not like it was pre 2019, but for last years averages�

If this is the new normal for Shutterstock (and I really hope it isn't) then this imho is a collapse of the agency in terms of its revenues from image and video sales. I'm astounded at the depth and velocity of its fall but maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. It's predictable.

• First, you slash contributor earnings for a quick profit boost
• You fully decentivize your main contributor base
• Your bulk of quality contributors stop uploading - and instead upload their fresh quality content to other agencies (your competition) that treat their contributors with more respect
• A large segment of your customer buyers and subscribers just naturally follow the better, fresh, quality content where contributors are uploading
• Your sales, revenues and profits drop.

I remember some years ago when Getty / iStock drastically reduced contributor commissions and SS acknowledged at the time that they were dealing with a huge influx of new contributors joining up (who were obviously deserting iStock in droves.) It's just crazy that SS did not learn from this. They clearly observed with the iStock situation that when an agency slashes contributor commissions, there will be a large contributor exodus. Surely, they must have been expecting that to happen. Well history repeats itself.

I know people here care and we're at the mercy of the agencies, but if the customers go to Adobe, and SS has much more profitable business gains in AI, news, or whatever else they own and do, they won't care about a division that's losing money. If it's too expensive to operate and unprofitable, they could shut down stock photos, as a cost cutting, expense reduction, initiative.

What kind of business do they have that is not dependend on the stock photo business?

When they shut down the stock photo business, the AI licencing business goes away as well. They may survive stagnation or even decline in the stock photo business, but without stock images (and videos etc.), they have no AI business.

after a long time, almost a year, this month shutterstock is above Adobe stock for me.

but it was mainly because of 2 high video sales. 100+ usd per sale.

It was reverse for me, contributing them from last 4 years, and Shutterstock is above Adobe Stock until Dec 2023.
and from last two months Adobe Stock is above Shutterstock.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 25, 2024, 12:46

Quote from: cascoly on February 24, 2024, 14:30

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 24, 2024, 13:43

./..
SS has diversified into other areas. They don't rely on just Microstock for earnings and income. Some day, the whole Microstock division could go away, and it wouldn't matter to the overall profits of the corporation. They won't care about our earnings or what we do as artists.

I know people here care and we're at the mercy of the agencies, but if the customers go to Adobe, and SS has much more profitable business gains in AI, news, or whatever else they own and do, they won't care about a division that's losing money. If it's too expensive to operate and unprofitable, they could shut down stock photos, as a cost cutting, expense reduction, initiative. ...

too many of the anti-SS crowd are quick to take recent numbers totally out of context w/o bothering to do their research
 and declaring SS dead -- look at the actual numbers, after a surge during the covid era (during which they were also declaring SS dead) its performance has reverted to the mean and their actual change over 5 years has been -2% - not a great investment stock, but also not a disastrous decline

by comparison tho, Adobe had a similar burst during covid, similar decline  but then has returned to its earlier high. Getty had  20% drop in 2022 and remained flat since.

It's hard to draw conculsions since Adobe is not just a microstock agency, but SS can declare "I'm not dead yet!"

Shutterstock is not just a Microstock agency. They have greatly diversified into other areas.

I wasn't referring to their investment stock, that's a different area. I'm looking at Stock Photos and Microstock, which for contributors has lost, and for SS their income from the same has dropped. Shutterstock, the Microstock division, (the part we care about) is dying.

The corporation and investment stock is doing fine.

but i was refencing the OP and topic name was SS is dead - not SS as a microstock agency is dead, and the numbers shows that's not true.  there's also little to show the ms side is dying - artist income is down for some (eg, for me, SS is down 10-20% over last 2 years but still doubles my income from AS), but SS continues to, make money in ms

The OP asked about SS sales and income for microstock, not the corporation.
Enterprise Value/EBITDA   10.95   27.28   23.80   42.58   68.18
2022 on right current on left. That's what dying looks like. We can all see that our sales and income is down 20% or more in the last year. Mine is down 40%

Quote from: Big Toe on February 25, 2024, 21:08

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 24, 2024, 13:43

I know people here care and we're at the mercy of the agencies, but if the customers go to Adobe, and SS has much more profitable business gains in AI, news, or whatever else they own and do, they won't care about a division that's losing money. If it's too expensive to operate and unprofitable, they could shut down stock photos, as a cost cutting, expense reduction, initiative.

What kind of business do they have that is not dependend on the stock photo business?

When they shut down the stock photo business, the AI licencing business goes away as well. They may survive stagnation or even decline in the stock photo business, but without stock images (and videos etc.), they have no AI business.

They have all kinds of divisions, and I don't really think they would shut down the stock photo business, just a far out idea that, if the rest of "Shutterstock" the corporation was making money and the Microstock division was losing money, they could close it down. I don't think that's likely. But if Microstock as an industry becomes obsolete?

You hardly see anyone making bottle openers anymore. Can openers for beverages are obsolete. Who's still in the buggy whip business, and the demand for horse shoes is really down. Hey here's a good one... KODAK film?

Yamaha doesn't just make pianos and musical instruments. Ever notice the logo is a tuning fork? Companies adapt and change as the market changes. The Gap started as a record shop. KOSS Corporation, made record players, but the headset they created to sell along with them was such a hit, that they went into the headset business. Olympus has spun off the camera division, but still makes other electronics and optical devices.

You're right. Without the new photos from real photographers, or drawings and more materials, the licensing for AI wouldn't be very profitable anymore.

There is a lot of truth in this post. I think as soon as you see that a company has to open up new market areas, this is an indication that the primary origin market has been grazed or that the technological changes no longer make this market profitable.

So if Shutterstock licenses their content for AI models, they expect the demand for stock images to fall sharply in the long term. And this forecast is not that unrealistic as many still seem to believe.

I think they also know that they will still need stock images for specific image types in order to continue to deliver content for the AI models and receive licensing revenue.

But they will no longer need generic images, like people pictures with smiling faces or in business suits. The current models already can generate perfect images of such content.

So it would only make sense to shrink this department to a healthy size.
For example only accepting highly professional content with ultra-high resolution for large print projects.

Or limiting the image categories only to the content that is still needed for the further development of the AI models.

I still beliebe that it would make most sense to send out invitations for professional freelance photographers who would specifically shoot the required type of images they need for further AI model developments.

This would take a lot of pressure off the review process and provide a regulated process and planning for AI license income.

That would also be a win-win-win constellation.

I can't imagine that shutterstock will still need millions of contributors in the future.
The costs are too high in the long term.

....speaking of their AI - I think they have a long way to go (taken from facebook post).  https://www.shutterstock.com/search/boyfriend?fbclid=IwAR33O1QGCz2kLRfVIiHLAydACpmAotzqRZP3lHlkmbK5QdbL7SvP3ZJXBKw_aem_AQ7kpL88Fe4monFCVpl0-efUlG-KIi1yYlVLybeHXosKros7lFb1NFsY5YXVWFKztUI&image_type=generated

It would be a lot more expensive to pay professionals for custom shootings upfront.

This way they get all the content for free.

And they will keep needing daily life content shot by normal people, because for social media advertising you often need real life content "editorial style" not high end glamour shots.

They just need a stream of fresh content with enough variety for their ai training from the entire planet. Keeping a base microstock agency open will deliver that.

Half the usual uploads is probably fine, maybe even could drop another 50% without affecting their ai business.

But they could lower royalties again, especially if going forward their main focus is not growing the stock business.

It is an easy way to make more money instantly and inspite of the complaints, uploads will continue.

And if high end content is missing, I wouldn't be surprised if they can generate that out of the mass content with the help of ai. Maybe employ a few specialised designers who keep maing high end content out of the "authentic"/amateur upload streams.

I would also be good for advertising the skills of their ai engine.

All legitimate thoughts.
I agree that we need fresh new content, otherwise we would still have photos with retro hairstyles, ugly striped suits that are too big with oversized shoulder pads and wide flared pants (which have made a comeback, by the way).

We need new content for new modern trends.
The question is how much is needed so that the AI models can adapt the new trends as quickly and flawlessly as possible.

I think that a few dozen thousand photos are enough to integrate new trends into a basic model. At least no one in the Stability AI community says he need millions of photos to calibrate a new model. Because it would take extremely high costs by renting thousands of Nvidia GPUs.

Yeah It would make sense to hire some professional designers, who will deliver high end AI stuff.
It would even also make sense to hire skilled IT nerds who can help calibrating specific AI models like some dudes doing it just for free and fun in the stable AI community.

You can't fight AI anymore, you have to adopt it.

If I would be shutterstock's CEO and my strategy would be to expand with AI by licensing photos, videos and 3D stuff, I would make a 5 years forward plan, which content is needed for the following model developments.

For example to hire freelancers, who can deliver stuff to calibrate models for authentic images of professions, medical and technical tools, cultural food, etc.

I would'nt want some Amateurs sending me millions of non authentical images, which can't be reviewed correctly because I would first have to teach my review team.

And imagine what will happen, if users will get multimodal AI models in the future.
They will prompt "write an article and generate a matching image" or "this is my business model like a car repair shop, I need suitable images for my website to present our services".

Then it's almost game over for the majority of contributors.

Because they have a high end platform called offset, but customers who need something very, very specific need a huge volume of files to sift through.

Customers that want prefiltered high end collections, can choose from offset, stocksy, getty, westend61 and many other boutique places.

There is really no lack of high end agencies.

But high end doesn't have the depth of a huge planetwide database.

The market needs all of it.

Quote from: Andrej.S. on February 27, 2024, 06:55

I would'nt want some Amateurs sending me millions of non authentical images, which can't be reviewed correctly because I would first have to teach my review team.

Ah Ha, but that's what SS has done and their business plan has been. We don't understand why, but they just keep going the same direction. Millions and millions of everyday, ordinary, repeating subjects and snapshots, and SS accepts them.

Difficult to understand why they don't "get serious".

Because they have crappy management board members who only want to be paid well and don't take serious actions, which can turn bad and you will get kicked out.

I mean they have the best database with statistics on buyer industries, best selling image categories, popular trends, etc.
You can use this to make an analysis or get advice from a BigFour consulting firm like Deloitte about which image categories and which buyer industries are threatened by AI models.

Then you can adapt your business plan what you want to promote more and set your focus.
But I bet they haven't developed a strategy worth mentioning. They will just cut further commissions and let it sink like a big titanic.

last month for first time SS was 3rd behind AS ($1 more!) and wirestock (which has t-3 times normal over last 3 months.  canva will likely also exceed SS

last month was one of WME overall, th o 5-month  rolling avg has been steady for last 18 months