An Interview with Ulf Schmidt-Funke by Stefan Hartmann for PICTORIAL Magazin 04/2016. It was – actually – a discussion about an entirely different topic. But Ulf Schmidt-Funke was just about to travel to the USA, where he planned to meet with major market players – including Reuters, New York TimesContinue Reading
Rumors have been rampant for a while. First Shutterstock was believed to be the buyer, a rumor quickly killed by no other than Jon Oringer himself during their last quarterly report. At the last DMLA conference, the target moved to China Visual Group and remained there. It is confirmed today:Continue Reading
I was recently invited to speak at B&H Photo Video . Here is the resulting podcast: “Anyone, I mean, anyone can submit their photos for sale in the stock-photography market. (Are you a foaper?) But the question remains: is it worth it? No doubt, the industry has been transformed by corporate conglomerationContinue Reading
Public photo industry surveys are so rare and few that it is always a refreshing exercise to review one when they do come out. VisualSteam just released the 2015 edition of its Art Buyer Survey and it surfaces some interesting trends. Leslie Hughes, VisualSteam’s President and CEO, said, “Art BuyersContinue Reading
You wouldn’t think about it this way, but Wall Street tends to be highly emotional and jittery when it comes to stock photo licensing. When companies with voracious growths – anything above 30%- show any signs of slowing down, it starts running for cover. The reason is very simple: theContinue Reading
Responding to an increasing demand for reliable insights on the stock photography market, the three top stock photography industry experts, Lee Torrens, Paul Melcher and Amos Struck, have officially launched Stock Photo Insight (http://stockphotoinsight.com), a consulting service providing calls with all three experts simultaneously. In addition, Stock Photo Insight isContinue Reading
Jon Oringer of Shutterstock said it well: barrier of entry in stock photography licensing today is very low (actually getting lower), barrier to scalability is very high and getting higher. In other words, it is easy to find and regroup content to license (UGC or not). It is much harderContinue Reading
Will convenience be the powerful feature to make Adobe’s $800 million gamble succeed in the stock photo market? Launched amidst a flurry of Creative Cloud updates for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere, Adobe Stock is a fully integrated stock photo offering within the company’s flagship product. Created with the content ofContinue Reading
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Bloomberg started spewing articles after articles on the sorry state of Getty Images. Three in a row, which is more than they did in the last 3 years combined. Fresh from insider knowledge, it reported Getty Images having poor ratings on a debt secured when purchasedContinue Reading
The recent news of Adobe’s acquisition of microstock company Fotolia has sent ripples throughout the photo licensing world. The software company purchased the 11 year company operating in 23 countries in 14 different language for $800 million in cash, in return for 34 million images. While the public announcement clearly aimedContinue Reading