Paul Melcher is a highly influential and visionary leader in visual tech, with 20+ years of experience in licensing, tech innovation, and entrepreneurship. He is the Managing Director of MelcherSystem and has held executive roles at Corbis, Stipple, and more. Melcher received a Digital Media Licensing Association Award and is a board member of Plus Coalition, Clippn, and Anthology, and has been named among the "100 most influential individuals in American photography"
Let’s face it. The next successful photo tech company will be mobile first and mobile only. The key mistake most photo tech companies are currently making is trying to monetize on the laptop web. Besides traditional media, this is no longer the place where people consume images. They want to take,Continue Reading
Social media photo platforms, rising in numbers from the dual pull of Instagram $1 billion acquisition and people’s insatiable appetite for mobile photography, are facing a complicated maturity issue: How to monetize without defection ? The first step of all social media photo platform is to gain traction by gainingContinue Reading
Busy week for Stock photography behemoth Getty Images. After opening up half of its images to free embedding, making a partnership with EyeEm, they have now announce that they are terminating their deal with Flickr. What does this mean ? On an individual level, photographers from Flickr who have imagesContinue Reading
It was just a question of time. We have repeatedly wrote here about how the current photo licensing model is broken and obsolete. We also explained at full length how image data collection and third-party revenue are the new gold mine. Getty apparently heard and isContinue Reading
The most seen picture of last night’s Oscars was not neither taken by a Dslr, nor a professional photographer and was not published (at first) in any publication. It was a selfie taken on a Samsung Note 3 by an actor and published on Twitter. If any one needed aContinue Reading
Photo app EyeEm announcement today that it will be opening an image licensing database made of photos submitted by its users brings an interesting though to the photo tech space. Considered by many as the gentle Instagram’s – its ToS does not attempt a copyright grab- it has managed toContinue Reading
How brands use photography on social media should be an indication on how to monetize photography on social media. By now, most of them are fully aware that having a presence on social media is an absolute must. Minimum, the big three, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Since the buzz recentlyContinue Reading
Listening in to Shutterstock’s financial results feels a little bit like being thrown back in time when Getty Images was a publicly traded company, with the numbers being obviously different. First the main numbers. Shutterstock has reported full year revenue of $235.5 million for 2013, up an impressive 39% (1). WhileContinue Reading
This week, on the same day actually, two companies released a new mobile photography marketplace app. Both with same underlying concept : With this app, anyone can shoot and submit their pictures to be licensed to image buyers worldwide. In a world where everyone snaps an images every 3.5 hourContinue Reading
The Western European Photo-Merchandise market is on track to reach a retail value of €618 million in 2014, up from an expected €578 million in 2013, according to the latest photo-merchandise research from Futuresource Consulting.”Fueled by photo-cards, canvases and calendars and potentially evolving ‘hot’ single image gift sectors, the photo-merchandiseContinue Reading