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Royalty free licencing of images is a fairly new idea. Introduced by Getty Images in the mid 1990s and quickly taken up by the other stock agencies of the day as an alternative way of buying image rights it quickly became a hot topic for photographers and remains controversial to this day.

So what does a royalty free stock image license mean?

As the copyright holder of an image you are able to sell a licence to reproduce your work. If you are not sure what a photography licence is then I suggest you read this post here and then return to this page.

A royalty free licence (sometimes referred to as RF) is the complete opposite of a rights managed licence. It is not concerned with the usage of the image and is regularly priced based on file size alone.

The initial idea of a royalty free licensed image was to allow image buyers to pay once and be able to use the image wherever and whenever they wanted - completely devoid of the normal royalty payments expected from the use of a traditional licence.

No time limits, no territory limits and no further payments to the photographer or agency once the initial royalty free licence has been bought.

Lets clear up a couple of misconceptions about royalty free images:

• they are not free - they are priced based on file size
  
• the image buyer does not own the copyright; only a licence to use the image - the buyer is not buying the rights to resell the image as their own

Why would any photographer want a part of this?? Sounds like a bad deal compared to Rights-Managed images.

Volume, pure and simple. Whereas a rights managed image may sell fewer times for a far greater sum per sale, a royalty free image will hope to sell more times for less return per sale.

This is great for anyone running an agency. Not so great for an individual photographer unless they make up in volume what they lose against a normal rights-managed sale.

Here’s a typical report of a royalty free stock image sale from stock library Alamy:

53 MB
5250 x 3511 pixels
2 MB compressed

As the RF file is sold by size and not usage this is all the information you get. You will have no idea of who bought it or what its going to be used for.

So, to recap:

Royalty free image licences turned photography into a commodity item. Regardless of content the price was the same, based on file size, and there is no restriction on usage, bar resale of the actual image itself.

Advantages for the buyer of a royalty free image

• no usage restrictions
• cheap prices (microstock agencies take this to a new level)

Disadvantages for the buyer of a royalty free image

• no usage history (can you be sure your competitor is not using it?)
• no exclusivity allowed (so you could be using an image that is already in use in your market sector….)

Pretty much favours the buyer…..

Advantages for the seller of a royalty free image

• volume - a good generic image with wide appeal may repeat sell

Disadvantages for the seller of a royalty free image

• low price per image sale - if it doesn’t sell in volume it may earn less than if sold as rights managed
• once sold as RF (even for $1 microstockers) cannot be sold as any other licence type ever…
• no restrictions on use by the buyer (so that shot of your teenage daughter could end up on some pretty unsavoury websites…alcohol, tobacco, sex industry etc etc…)
• prices of RF falling like a stone courtesy of the microstock business.

Hopefully that’s given you an overview of how to sell images as royalty free and what that licence type means for your images.

PP

Tags: copyright, licences, licenses, Photography Business, RF, royalty free, Stock Photography, usage

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Understanding licensing types: Rights Ready Image licences (0)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Protected or Exclusive image licences (0)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Managed image licences (0)
• Stock Photography: Can you sell an image as RF and RM at the same time? (3)
• Selling on Alamy: Royalty Free or Licenced? (3)