News

Shutterstock have announced reaching 1 billion dollars paid out to contrubutors. The figure is calculated across all sites in the shutterstock network, bigstock and offset, and includes both royalties and referral commissions.

The graph shown in their blog post immediately caught my interest - not sure why but graphs with dodgy axis always scream out at me... (this was indeed quite inconvenient when watching Al Gore on his scissor lift)

The numbers plotted out on a linear scale are shown below, a distinct slow down in payouts since 2015 is revealed.

At the end of last week Shutterstock announced it was about to change its royalty rates for Extended Licenses. You can read the details of the changes on microstockdiaries. Announcing the change would take place and then letting us wait a few days for the change to appear on the payouts page was uncharacteristically limp-wristed for Shutterstock.

A somewhat brief article as unfortunately I have not left myself enough time to write a proper commentary on the subject: Microstock contributors are probably already aware of the thread at microstock group and 'movement' organized by boycottfotolia.org

The issue stems from photographer sentiment that devaluing of their work by Fotolias launch of 'dollar photo club' is something of a 'last straw' considering the license terms, image resolution etc provided. I can't really say I blame them considering Fotolias track record on transparency (or lack thereof).

August and September may have been quiet months on the microstock news front, but there was certainly no shortage of 'excitement' in the months before. It now seems a long time ago but to understand the "Yuri has spoken" post fully (if you have not already read it!) it's good to know the related events leading up to it, and so a...

Timeline of Events:

18th May - Yuri Goes Exclusive with Getty

After some speculation Yuri Arcurs posted a message on microstockgroup announcing he was to start working exclusively with getty images (what he actually says is Getty are a good distribution partner and he's removing his images from other agencies).

Registrations have opened for MicrostockExpo 2013 to be held on November 16-17th in Berlin.

Bruce Livingstone has been announced as the Keynote speaker at the conference. Bruce was founder of istockphoto and is CEO of the new photographers co-op stocksy. This year's event will feature separate tracks for photographers, illustration and video masterclasses, all tailored for "serious contributors".

Tickets are available now for 249 Euros + VAT (Early bird price before June 1st. ). You can register, subscribe for updates as they are announced and find full details on the official website at microstockexpo.com

Use promotion code MSI2013 to get an extra 20% off your ticket price
microstockexpo.com/register