This is an article from 2019 already showing problems.

Today their stock is down 2% although the market is up, but it might be because they are going Ex Dividend.

The wider stock market will hear about these problems in a few weeks.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4306978-shutterstock-enterprise-growth-is-gone

And next time they present data, they will probably have drastically increased  profits. So I doubt the stock market cares, maybe they will sell it as a bonus that the little people are leaving the platform.

What I cannot understand is reducing commissions to the point many large contributors will disappear.  At the same time rejecting 90% of the images uploaded.

In the long term SS database will decline when companies such as Alamy and DT will continue to increase in size.  In the long run, this does hurt SS because it will no longer be the Top Dog in the stock market.

Cannot understand their business plan??

Because it is short term thinking. That is what made me think that something else is in play here than just a royalty grab.

Quote from: William Perry on June 04, 2020, 14:31

What I cannot understand is reducing commissions to the point many large contributors will disappear.  At the same time rejecting 90% of the images uploaded.

In the long term SS database will decline when companies such as Alamy and DT will continue to increase in size.  In the long run, this does hurt SS because it will no longer be the Top Dog in the stock market.

Cannot understand their business plan??

Because it is short term thinking. That is what made me think that something else is in play here than just a royalty grab.

They will offer exclusivity soon, when we get on our knees. The only real competitor to them is Getty, without exclusivity, they are lagging.

Total guess; they think there are enough photographers that photos are devalued to the point they are covered even if they only give 10c.

That leaves illustrations, which for example even IS realised they need to compensate better for.

Instead of going that route (based on all the Indian people giving fake reviews and writing fake articles, plus reports that reviews have moved to India) I believe SS has come to the conclusion that they can have a set up similar to freepik, but instead of producing in house they have select partners in Indian "factories" producing hundreds of thousands of illustrations per week and happy to take 10c. I am not sure why they think this will work given the quality of stuff that has been coming out of those setups for years. Probably because they have bought in management who have no idea what they are talking about.

You mean Jon Oringer that holds 45% of the shares.......

They dont care one bit!  they can't afford to care the shareholders still want their money end of story!