Category Archives: mobile

Mobile first, Mobile only

Brands, content, finance, mobile, PhotoTech, Social Media, technology, Twitter March 27, 2014 Paul Melcher Leave a comment

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, alter, share and view images on their mobile devices. Twitter knows this and it’s recent new feature release is proof. One can now put 4 images in a tweet, viewable immediately in a feed, as…

Getty / Flickr calls it quits

commercial stock, content, flickr, getty, license, Marketplace, mobile, PhotoTech, technology, transaction March 10, 2014 Paul Melcher 1 Comment

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 images on Getty will continue to be represented by Getty according to their agreement. However, Getty will not continue to mine Flickr for new photos or photographers. Instead, they recommend Flickr users to pick up the…

Vessel underway, possibly the training ship MERSEY

The content or the vessel

Brands, content, editorial, Facebook, flickr, getty, license, marketing, Microstock, mobile, PhotoTech, Social Media, technology, transaction, Twitter March 2, 2014 Paul Melcher Leave a comment

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 to carve itself a respectable area in the very crowded space of the phone app with a sharing network. Being a free app, it is now trying to find a revenue model that preserves its photographer/contributor…

Sell your photos apps : Why it’s a bad idea

content, editorial, finance, license, Marketplace, mobile, prosumer, transaction February 20, 2014 Paul Melcher Leave a comment

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 hour of their waking life, why not built a marketplace where people can submit some of these images so that others can license them. Great idea, no ? No. For many reasons : They are building…

Mobile Apps fuel Photo-Merchandise market to record high

finance, mobile, photo merchandise, transaction February 19, 2014 Paul Melcher 2 Comments

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-merchandise market is forecast to grow by 4% CAGR between 2012 and 2017, to reach nearly €657 million in 2017,” says Jeremy Wills, Senior Market Analyst at Futuresource Consulting. “This will be assisted by mobile and…

Exclusive : Getty Images new phone App

commercial stock, editorial, filter, flickr, getty, keyword, Microstock, mobile, news, photojournalism, PhotoTech, Royalty free, technology February 6, 2014 Paul Melcher 11 Comments

If you have been reading this blog, you already know that we strongly believe that the next big disruption to the pro licensing scene is already in your hands. Not so much because everyone has a camera and can potentially shoot ( nothing new here) but rather for its ability to put image buyers and sellers in direct contact around a specific need. The big change here is that instead of being an offer-first marketplace – where stock agencies create a large pool of images in…

Why mobile stock is the future of the industry.

commercial stock, corbis, finance, getty, license, mobile, PhotoTech, prosumer, Royalty free, Social Media, technology November 6, 2013 Paul Melcher 52 Comments

I organized a panel at the recent PACA ( the Digital Media Licensing Association) conference around mobile photography and image licensing. I invited 4 companies representative of what is going on in this space, in an effort to show and explain that the next major disruption in the professional image licensing world will come from your mobile phone . Everyone is now fully aware that professional Dslr are going to be replaced by mobile phone cameras. It is just a question of time. Already, this year, there…