News
PhotoShelter exiting stock photography business to focus on archive service
In a letter sent yesterday, PhotoShelter CEO Allen Murabayashi reveled plans to close down the company’s stock licensing division stating that “The PhotoShelter Collection was unable to change buyer behavior on a grand scale and generate revenues quickly enough to satisfy our goals for this product line”. As of today the company has stated that it has stopped accepting new research requests from buyers and will cease licensing images on October 10th.
The one year old effort was heralded by photographers for offering a 70/30 commission split and the company has stated that contributors with outstanding sales will be paid according to the companies standard policies (approximately 45-60 days from the purchase date). Murabayashi adds “Our financial position remains strong and we look forward to being a part of the photography community for many years to come. Our focus going forward will be our Personal Archive business and innovative new product directions”.
On the PhotoShelter blog Murabayashi mused about the following ‘key learnings’ that lead them to re-focus away from the stock licensing business.
1. Stock photography is a slow growing market dominated by a single player
There was a single moment for a company to capitalize in stock photography, and Getty took it. The use of stock imagery isn’t growing fast enough to create a displacement opportunity, and Getty is far too aggressive (and smart) to allow secondary players to displace them in any fashion.
2. Research Requests move too quickly for individuals to react in a timely fashion
We believed that using the crowd to fulfill research requests would give us an enormous advantage over the competition, but the nature of the industry is such that many research requests are due within a day, making it nearly impossible for non-fulltime stock photographers to react. Research requests are therefore relegated to what they’ve always been - namely the locating of existing images within an extant library that are ready for immediate licensing.
3. Buyers desire more diversity, but convenience (aka subscription deals) triumphs this desire
The largest consumers of stock photography are often locked into subscription deals, which makes it very difficult for them to consider alternate sources. Subscription deals are very bad for photographers, but great for business.
4. A crowd-source model for stock will likely never work
Licensing a photo is not a simple proposition. It is not like selling a widget. There are huge intellectual property issues, technical issues, and meta data issues that are difficult for even full-time pros to grasp. Companies that represent collections of stock photography have to build entire divisions of staff to deal with rights clearances and lawsuit that arise from improper clearance.
Web: www.photoshelter.com - “A Difficult Decision” blog posting by Allen Murabayashi - Photoshelter’s FAQ document about the closing - Response by industry rival Digital Railroad - Click here to view featured image.
Posted in: Micropayment Stock Photography, News, Photographers, Stock Photo Companies
