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Holy schmoly, we all gulped, gasped and said “huh?” when Getty Images, the world’s most famous stock library, went and bought out the microstock retailer istockphoto a while back.

Microstock libraries like istockphoto sell RF images for as little as $1. They have definitely had an effect on the sales of traditional RF priced photography as the quality on microstock is surprisingly good. Simpler, easier to produce images (stuff on white backgrounds etc) were now being sold at between $1 and $10 by the micros. Bit of a no brainer for an image buyer who does not want exclusivity and isn’t worried if the image has been used 100 times before.

It was clear for all to see that sales of simple to produce imagery in traditional RF collections on libraries like Getty, Corbis and Alamy would take a nosedive courtesy of the new kid on the block – istockphoto and its many clones. Getty needed to act.

When Getty bought istock people speculated that they bought it to kill it – they bought it to cream off the best photographers into their wholly-owned content collections (still a possibility) – they bought it to raise prices so it wouldn’t detract from their other ‘normally priced’ RF collections. What nobody foresaw was the latest announcement by Getty.

Getty just announced that a 500px web sized (72dpi) image from any of its editorial or creative image collections (that includes RF, RM, RR licensed images) could be purchased for $49.

Caveats:

• applies to all RF images with no time limits
  
• RM images have usage restricted to one year
• RR images have usage restricted to 10 years

$49!! could buy you a top class image in one of Getty’s premiere rights managed collections that would normally otherwise sell for hundreds if not thousands of dollars for traditional web usage.

This is getting dangerously close to microstock pricing. It certainly is microstock pricing for contributors on the standard Getty cut of 20% of sales revenue. A $49 sale will net a contributor under $10 an image sale.

Let’s not forget that more people will see an image on the internet than will in print. The www is worldwide and the top sites have readerships far in excess of any printed material you could imagine. For an industry that sells images based on usage – cutting the price of images sold for the greatest use seems like shooting yourself in the foot. Or does it?

So why should Getty do this? It bought istockphoto to get a foot in the microstock industry. Why should it offer bargain basement pricing across its entire range of premium collections?

IMHO, I think that it’s to gain market share away from the micros and to start shifting web sized images from its collections affected by the micros in volume. The big cheeses at Getty can’t have helped but notice the way in which certain images are downloaded multiple times on the micros. Its a model which is good for the agency (they keep 80% after all and 80% of $49 is better than 80% of nothing) and not so good for the photographer.

I can’t see Getty slashing prices to make less money. Doesn’t make sense. They have always been great at selling images. Perhaps at $49 they will sell a bucketload more….

But where will it stop? What does this mean for stock photography RF licencing in general?

Once the low end of RF has effectively all gone micro (because where Getty goes – others tend to follow) will the next tier succumb? and the next, and the next? Will we get to a stage where any RF licence is the ‘bargain priced’ imagery for sale? Will RM or RP be the ‘cream’ – sold with exclusivity and equivalent to commissioned photography?

Perhaps we will. Perhaps what we are seeing here is a slow erosion and devaluation of the RF licencing model. A model which Getty gave birth to … and by their actions, Getty may now be killing…slowly and surely…but killing all the same….from the bottom tier up.

PP

Tags: $49, Comment, Getty Images, Photography Business, Stock Photography

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