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iStockphoto introducing stock photography and footage subscription in May ‘08
Getty’s micropayment product, iStockphoto, the first and largest of the micro-payment sites with an image licensed every 1.4 seconds, has announced that it will be launching a subscription service to allow open access to photos, illustrations, and footage, for a period of 3, 6 or 12 months. The company is currently in private BETA testing of the new service and has declined to release information about the pricing and terms of the service except to say that Packages will start for as little as $96/month. Other companies offering similar subscription services include Shutterstock, SnapVillage and Stockxpert.
iStockphoto who recently announced that it generated $71.9 million in revenue in 2007 (royalties of $20.9 million paid to contributors) with projections of $122 million for 2008 seems to be responding to customer demand with its newest offering “You’ve asked, and soon you shall receive… Have an office full of creatives with an insatiable addition to iStock? No problem. Subscriptions will be available for Corporate Accounts where you’ll save time and money by customizing a plan that meets your group’s needs. Select the number of users, daily credit limits for your team and the duration of the plan. The longer the plan, the less you’ll pay per image” states iStock´s VP Kelly Thompson in the announcement.
There are already over more than 200 pro and con responses to the announcement in the iStock forum which states that all images will be available to subscribers unless a contributor opts-out of participating in the service.
Click here to view the original announcement.
Comments(1)
post a comment »John Johnson, May 13, 2009 [#]
I caught some guys stealing photos from istockphoto in November of 2008 and reported it to istockphoto.com enforcement department. It’s now almost 6 months later and the images are still out there where people can download them.
My question to istock photographers is this: Does istock care about your livelyhood enough to back you up when someone steals your photos?
My guess is that they don’t spend a lot of time on this based on the fact that the guys who committed the theft haven’t shown any signs of having even a slight case of attornyrectalosis (that’s having an attorney up their butts with a flashlight). I’m not even sure if the guys ever had to buy extended licenses.
It is appalling to me for istock not to make an example out of these guys.
One of the guys I spoke to about this incident said that they don’t discuss what is being done about situations like this but in my opinion Istockphoto needs to get off their butts and make examples out of these guys.