Author Topic: Introducing the free collection from Adobe Stock (Read 97715 times)

Tenebroso · « **Reply #150 on:** October 15, 2020, 20:04 »

Quote from: MatHayward on October 15, 2020, 20:01

Hi everyone,

I truly appreciate the feedback you've given so far. As many of you know, I've been an active member in this forum since long before I worked at Fotolia and eventually Adobe Stock. You've always held me accountable and have never been an "easy" group. While you've proven challenging at times, you have consistently earned my respect and you continue to do so. It's why I'm here as much as I am. It's not just me that values your opinions at Adobe Stock. The entire team is grateful for who you are, and what you do. I know I say this a lot, but it's important to me to emphasize it again. Without content creators, Adobe Stock does not exist. We have a great responsibility to you and we take that very seriously.

There are no perfect answers or solutions. Once it seems you've got things figured out, the industry changes. That's the only thing I've found that stays the same in stock as the years go by...change. We cannot realistically expect to continue to do the same things, the same way and find the same results as we have had in the past. If it worked that way, I'd still be submitting everything with massive amounts of Gaussian blur and spot color. We have to adapt and evolve.

It is my mission to provide you all with communication as to how best to navigate and adapt through the changes in a manner that is as timely and as transparent as possible.

I will be out of the (home) office tomorrow (Friday 10/16) as I am traveling with my family to visit my Daughter in Eastern Washington. I won't be able to respond as much the next few days as I have the last two, but I will be checking in as often as I can and I will get back to you with any updates or answers that are needed as soon as possible. Your patience is appreciated in advance.

Sincerely,

Mat Hayward

Enjoy the weekend. Thank you.

gillian vann · « **Reply #151 on:** October 15, 2020, 20:17 »

Quote from: MatHayward on October 15, 2020, 20:01

Hi everyone,

I truly appreciate the feedback you've given so far. As many of you know, I've been an active member in this forum since long before I worked at Fotolia and eventually Adobe Stock. You've always held me accountable and have never been an "easy" group. While you've proven challenging at times, you have consistently earned my respect and you continue to do so. It's why I'm here as much as I am. It's not just me that values your opinions at Adobe Stock. The entire team is grateful for who you are, and what you do. I know I say this a lot, but it's important to me to emphasize it again. Without content creators, Adobe Stock does not exist. We have a great responsibility to you and we take that very seriously.

There are no perfect answers or solutions. Once it seems you've got things figured out, the industry changes. That's the only thing I've found that stays the same in stock as the years go by...change. We cannot realistically expect to continue to do the same things, the same way and find the same results as we have had in the past. If it worked that way, I'd still be submitting everything with massive amounts of Gaussian blur and spot color. We have to adapt and evolve.

It is my mission to provide you all with communication as to how best to navigate and adapt through the changes in a manner that is as timely and as transparent as possible.

I will be out of the (home) office tomorrow (Friday 10/16) as I am traveling with my family to visit my Daughter in Eastern Washington. I won't be able to respond as much the next few days as I have the last two, but I will be checking in as often as I can and I will get back to you with any updates or answers that are needed as soon as possible. Your patience is appreciated in advance.

Sincerely,

Mat Hayward

thanks Mat. You've been put into a terrible position here, having to defend something that we all know is a bad idea, at least from a contributor's perspective. It's great that you've been brave enough to spend so much time here today.

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #152 on:** October 15, 2020, 20:56 »

So offering free content to compete against free content? Who will win the race to have the most and best free content? And what's the prize for the winner?

Unfortunately Adobe and other businesses are being put in this position by people like us. Creatives who think it's brave, honorable, charitable or some other noble cause to provide free content to free sites. No wonder why we're called starving artists. Hard to pay for food when you think it's a good idea to work for free.

Tenebroso · « **Reply #153 on:** October 15, 2020, 21:12 »

Actually, the photos are paid, with an agreement between the artist and AS. Free is for the customer. AS pays for images, whether they are downloaded or not. Logically, you will have the best of the best, they will not give away anything that is not extraordinary. At an agreed price, whether the image is downloaded or not.

It's not good for us.

AS offers quality to its customers. You should not pay part of the commission for sales to the collaborator.

The collaborator receives money for his work. Whether it is downloaded 20k times or not is no longer the contributor's business.

Our portfolio has competition. The quality of companions in the FREE section.

We will have to do quality and volume to offer alternatives to free files.

Bad day.

Pauws99 · « **Reply #154 on:** October 16, 2020, 01:33 »

Quote from: MatHayward on October 15, 2020, 12:57

Quote from: sgoodwin4813 on October 15, 2020, 10:52
The News app on my iPhone gives me free access to tons of great stories from many sources. Some are only available on News+ and they are always trying to get me to upgrade. While some of those stories look interesting, the same content often becomes available for free in a few days from the same or a different source, so I can get access to 97-plus percent of what I want for free, and I have gotten very good at just skipping over any that are listed in News+. The probability that I am ever going to sign up for the paid news is basically zero. I suspect the same is going to happen here. Once we get it in our minds that the price for something is free, getting people to pay for it later is unlikely. After the word gets out that you can download over 36,000 high-quality images for free every year there will be no need for anyone to pay for them ever again - I certainly wouldn't. Commercial clients might occasionally if they can't get exactly the image they want but within a few months I expect those will be very few and far between. I hope I'm wrong but I won't be holding my breath on this one.

I think your news app analogy is very appropriate for this conversation. My question for you is this...did you ever pay for a News app before you started getting the articles for free? If not, then they have lost nothing from you. Do you however, believe that other people are willing to pay for the news app that were drawn in through an article they found for free? My gut says the answer is yes. How many people were subscribing to have the paper delivered to their door until the digital era kicked in and completely disrupted the industry? How many papers went out of business because they didn't adapt to the changes fast enough?

The people that only visit stock sites that offer content for free had no chance of ever buying a license from you. As was illustrated earlier in this thread, those sites have picked up a lot of momentum and that hasn't seemed to be slowing down. Now, there is at least a chance to convert the people visiting for the free collection into paying customers. This has already proven to be true in just the first day of the program as I've learned multiple visitors through free converted and made purchases yesterday which is very good news. The collection size, content, the download use, everything about this is being closely monitored by people much smarter than I am whom I trust. They will be reacting appropriately.

I've heard your concerns loud and clear and I promise that I understand them. I'm in constant communication with the team and I will continue to keep you updated as I learn anything that you may find important.

Thanks,

Mat

Which news apps allow people to copy whole articles to incorporate in their products and sell?

Chichikov · « **Reply #155 on:** October 16, 2020, 02:12 »

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on October 15, 2020, 20:56

So offering free content to compete against free content? Who will win the race to have the most and best free content? And what's the prize for the winner?

Unfortunately Adobe and other businesses are being put in this position by people like us. Creatives who think it's brave, honorable, charitable or some other noble cause to provide free content to free sites. No wonder why we're called starving artists. Hard to pay for food when you think it's a good idea to work for free.

The winner gets on month of free downloads on Shutterstock!

vectorsforall · « **Reply #156 on:** October 16, 2020, 02:39 »

This free collection stuff doesn't sound ok to me but I must agree that at the moment Adobe Stock is my new "iStock-before-the-getty-nightmare" agency
Very good prices and rpi with regularity

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #157 on:** October 16, 2020, 03:19 »

Quote from: fiftyfootelvis on October 15, 2020, 13:20

...Microstock killed traditional stock. Giving away images for free will kill microstock.

"Microstock is reaping what it sowed". That idea gets raised as discussions about changes - usually damaging ones - come up. I think it's way off the mark because it misses some really key details of how things operated with "traditional stock" and what microstock did when it started in the early 2000s.

Prices in traditional stock were kept high in part because only a few people could participate - limited supply. Costs were different then - film & slides versus digital, and many more people were involved to help a customer locate a needed image - but isolated apples or citrus slices got those high prices as well, not just elaborate shoots. The business operated more like those from earlier ages with a guild controlling who gets to ply the trade - which is how you maintain high prices.

Also, traditional stock was often licensed as rights managed (you pay a different price depending on your use, which countries and how big a business you are). That's a complicated transaction, not something easily and quickly handled.

When royalty free licensing came along - pre microstock - there was lots of complaining from those who could see what that would do to their income, but it allowed a simple transaction to occur where the price is the price. It freed the agency from tracking usage (for the most part) because there were no time or geography or page-placement issues to check up on. It may have increased the buyer pool slightly, but not much

When microstock started, its big change was not just that transactions were immediate and simple, but reducing prices drew in millions of small business buyers who would not (and did not) license stock images before. It wasn't just opening up the supply to anyone who could pass the agency's acceptance test, but massively increasing the buyer pool as a way of increasing demand as well.

Most of the changes since have been either agencies trying to poach business from one another, not increasing the pool of buyers, or dropping any idea of acceptance standards to increase the supply of images - more of the same, not so much expanding the type of imagery available to buyers.

I've heard many complaints about subscriptions being the source of, or start of, the race to the bottom in microstock. At the beginning, there were sane guardrails that made subscriptions work for all three groups in this market - buyers, contributors and agencies. (1) the number of downloads per day was capped, (2) subscription prices increased as the size of the collection increased, (3) only high volume (750 a month) subscriptions were available, and (4) no rollovers

Once Shutterstock was successful, every agency wanted to get their piece of that action, but in spite of their claims that subscriptions would bring in new buyers, it always canibalized credit sales. Agencies experimented with lower priced subscriptions, lower volume subscriptions, no restrictions (daily limits went and only the monthly remained).

The worst of these schemes had to have been the Dollar Photo Club, with a 10 image a month subscription for $10, with rollovers. Until Getty came up with Premium Access that netted contributors fractions of a cent per download that is

There is nothing inherently unsustainable about the original microstock model. The good news was how successful it was; the bad news is that success (i.e. lots of profits) brings in predators who are only looking at the money they can wring out. Each erosion of contributor earnings - whether it be a royalty cut, increased rights for the same license price, or trying to compete with free - encourages a similar move from the other agencies.

In Adobe's case, their primary business is something other than licensing stock. We're barely a blip on their radar screen and how they perform - or don't - as a stock agency doesn't impact what they care about - see this article and this one on recent stock performance.

I used to work for a computer company that started as a hardware company, but evolved to both hardware & software. In selling hardware and trying to make their quotas, sales reps would frequently sweeten the deal by including free software. As part of a software group whose budget was set on the basis of paid sales, we were scr3wed as we received no credit for those freebies. The company cared about hardware sales, their primary business.

Adobe has done a deal with factory contributors so they get paid for these freebies, but other contributors with similars can't compete with free and it beggars belief to suggest that their sales won't be affected. Adobe may view this arrangement as fair, but I don't. However, Adobe will prioritize their primary business and we - stock contributors - are in their thoughts, if at all, as a deal sweetener.

I don't think freebies will kill microstock, although it may well put many of us small-business contributors out of business. If you look at Shutterstock's latest uploads (screenshot from a few minutes ago), this is likely what microstock will mean a year or two from now

gillian vann · « **Reply #158 on:** October 16, 2020, 03:37 »

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on October 16, 2020, 03:19

Quote from: fiftyfootelvis on October 15, 2020, 13:20
...Microstock killed traditional stock. Giving away images for free will kill microstock.

Most of the changes since have been either agencies trying to poach business from one another, not increasing the pool of buyers, or dropping any idea of acceptance standards to increase the supply of images - more of the same, not so much expanding the type of imagery available to buyers.

excellent observation, and I had wondered if Adobe is doing this to knock out their competitors, instead of trying to get new customers. I suppose they've tried to suggest they are trying to bring in new customers, but we all suspect they are not the right kind of customer, ie, a paying customer.

Digital · « **Reply #159 on:** October 16, 2020, 03:43 »

Interesting move. I'm wondering why Adobe didn't do this some 15-20 years ago. Then none of the other micro companies like iS and SS would have even existed.

changingsky · « **Reply #160 on:** October 16, 2020, 04:50 »

Quote from: Digital on October 16, 2020, 03:43

Interesting move. I'm wondering why Adobe didn't do this some 15-20 years ago. Then none of the other micro companies like iS and SS would have even existed.

Adobe as a company has other products and always was in more secure situation. They just decided that this is the moment.
Other thing - amount of people which think that creatives by their nature are happy to work for "references and recognition" instead of money will continue to grow. Reflecting this currently paying clients will follow the motto "nothing personal, only business"

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #161 on:** October 16, 2020, 06:51 »

Quote from: Tenebroso on October 15, 2020, 21:12

Actually, the photos are paid, with an agreement between the artist and AS. Free is for the customer. AS pays for images, whether they are downloaded or not. Logically, you will have the best of the best, they will not give away anything that is not extraordinary. At an agreed price, whether the image is downloaded or not.

If that was directed at me, that's not the point. Regardless if the people who own the free photos are paid, more free photos hurts the people like us who aren't being directly paid.

Who remembers free ad-based internet from the late 1990s? You open the app to connect and while the 56K modem takes a minute to brrrr-weeee-bing-bong you get to stare at an advertisement. For a while a I didn't pay for internet. Why would I if free internet was available? Over time the free services would go out of business. So I kept finding new ones until there were no more free internet providers and I had no option but to pay. And that's what needs to happen with free photos. They need to go away because the more free options that are available the fewer people will buy photos. One of these filthy rich stock companies needs to buy out these free sites and shut them down. Or creatives need to come to their senses and realize they're hurting themselves and the entire industry by submitting content to free sites.

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #162 on:** October 16, 2020, 07:05 »

Quote from: Chichikov on October 16, 2020, 02:12

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on October 15, 2020, 20:56
So offering free content to compete against free content? Who will win the race to have the most and best free content? And what's the prize for the winner?

Unfortunately Adobe and other businesses are being put in this position by people like us. Creatives who think it's brave, honorable, charitable or some other noble cause to provide free content to free sites. No wonder why we're called starving artists. Hard to pay for food when you think it's a good idea to work for free.

The winner gets on month of free downloads on Shutterstock!

The only winners will be the people who download the free photos and the free photo sites. The free photos sites will still figure out some way to stuff their pockets full of money for swank offices and mansions while not paying contributors. They'll write some ~~deceptive~~ chivalrous grass-roots mission statement ~~manipulating~~ appealing to the ~~naive~~ charitable nature of creatives.

changingsky · « **Reply #163 on:** October 16, 2020, 07:08 »

May be somebody can identify the source, i don't remember the exact wording too. The statement which i find very correct, was the following: a manager which proposes to give away own product to increase sales, will never solve the compnay's problems. He will just move to next after this company death.

Shelma1 · « **Reply #164 on:** October 16, 2020, 07:24 »

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on October 16, 2020, 06:51

Quote from: Tenebroso on October 15, 2020, 21:12
Actually, the photos are paid, with an agreement between the artist and AS. Free is for the customer. AS pays for images, whether they are downloaded or not. Logically, you will have the best of the best, they will not give away anything that is not extraordinary. At an agreed price, whether the image is downloaded or not.

If that was directed at me, that's not the point. Regardless if the people who own the free photos are paid, more free photos hurts the people like us who aren't being directly paid.

Who remembers free ad-based internet from the late 1990s? You open the app to connect and while the 56K modem takes a minute to brrrr-weeee-bing-bong you get to stare at an advertisement. For a while a I didn't pay for internet. Why would I if free internet was available? Over time the free services would go out of business. So I kept finding new ones until there were no more free internet providers and I had no option but to pay. And that's what needs to happen with free photos. They need to go away because the more free options that are available the fewer people will buy photos. One of these filthy rich stock companies needs to buy out these free sites and shut them down. Or creatives need to come to their senses and realize they're hurting themselves and the entire industry by submitting content to free sites.

The problem is that they're not hurting themselves. Look at Freepik. They made their money by stealing work and offering it for free, and Shutterstock allowed them to earn affiliate money. Then when they had enough money to make people pay they suddenly got selective and invited a chosen few to upload high quality work, which they make good earnings from, if you believe what people are saying. So someone like me loses tons of money while they give away my stolen work, but Freepik makes money, and Shutterstock gets referral business, and a select number of contributors get chosen to get a windfall while the getting's good.

Freepik then went on to become an Adobe affiliate, and now Adobe has made a deal with some of those contributors to pay them in advance and give their work away "free" in order to attract more creatives to Adobe software. So you have a small group of contributors quietly cutting deals with Shutterstock, Freepik, Adobe, etc. while the rest of us get shut out, have our royalties slashed and eventually give up.

Tenebroso · « **Reply #165 on:** October 16, 2020, 08:23 »

I totally agree with the comments you are making, I just keep studying DUO. I have a hard time expressing myself.

It's not really the end of microstock, right. We are in a time of change and I am positive. We will find the way.

Actually, the only thing I want to convey, when I say that it is not free, is that they will pay more than 0.10. But in theory. 0.10 is per download. Zero if not downloaded. AS will now pay more than 0.10, but there will be many image sales that will exceed several digits in commission, but will be charged at a price previously set.

As for Freepik, this is his end. My thinking is, as has been said here, that as the number of artists increases, the margin becomes unsustainable, except for four collaborators. His clients are software, now, they pay little to Freepik or nothing to AS, they go to AS, who have the best photos selected for graphic designers. Free.

Before, we competed with each other. Now we compete between ourselves and free images. Material will be expanded, according to the needs of AS. Without us there is no Stock, the problem is oversupply. You kick a stone, and a microstocker comes out behind it.

Like when you bought a pot of coffee and they gave you a mobile.

The market will stabilize. But this AS maneuver hurts us and widens the competition between us further. Selling batch files of 1k images, 2k images, 67k images. Files by weight, like chickens in the butcher shop. By weight.

We are neither angry nor sad anymore. The market is simply adjusting. We will find the way.

thx9000 · « **Reply #166 on:** October 16, 2020, 08:29 »

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on October 16, 2020, 03:19

This looks like a screenshot taken pre-2010. It seems that we have come full circle.
I agree with the people who think this is just a part of a bigger plan which main focus is Adobe CC. We're an afterthought at this point, a means to an end.

wds · « **Reply #167 on:** October 16, 2020, 09:08 »

Even the people who are being paid to put their images in the free section may not be winners because they are hurting their own non-free content sales as well. The free stuff may be chosen more than anticipated vs. their non-free content.

Tenebroso · « **Reply #168 on:** October 16, 2020, 09:28 »

Of course. AS knows what each customer is looking for. Know what each image sells. Know what each collaborator earns. The auction starts now.

They are not going to give away the bad, they are going to give their clients the best. And then there are the images that are downloaded from time to time, for those customers who do not find something they need. Service and quality for software customers.

In reality, the most affected are the general group of collaborators. Even if we can use upfront cash, in reality, only the best will be paid.

In my thinking, all collaborators lose. Who does it affect the most? Those who are growing, those in the middle, those with large but not huge portfolios. The small ones exactly the same, little income. The big ones exactly the same, income in one way or another, somewhat lower. For collaborators in the middle, income drops, once again.

They have done it with transparency and showing their face. They will take care of the collaborators, giving money without being abusive. The move is corporate and very successful for the company. They squeeze us a little more, so that we can improve.

Evaristo tenscadisto · « **Reply #169 on:** October 16, 2020, 09:36 »

Adobe is not just "educating" clients.
It will be a question of days to watch adobe free content being sold in other agencies.
Agencies do nothing about it and Adobe is now on this boat too

More and more i am convinced that copyright thieves is the new form of art.

cathyslife · « **Reply #170 on:** October 16, 2020, 09:38 »

Quote from: thx9000 on October 16, 2020, 08:29

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on October 16, 2020, 03:19

This looks like a screenshot taken pre-2010. It seems that we have come full circle.
I agree with the people who think this is just a part of a bigger plan which main focus is Adobe CC. We're an afterthought at this point, a means to an end.

Exactly my thought, you beat me to it. Microstock started out as amateurs and semi-amateurs providing images to fill the gap, as has been mentioned. People and small companies who couldn’t afford hundreds of dollars for one image used them. The images were not big budgeted, but the royalties weren’t big either. And the images Jo Ann posts look very much like the images that most of us submitted back in 2004, when we were starting out. Yes, full circle.

Tenebroso · « **Reply #171 on:** October 16, 2020, 09:43 »

They will offer three very good sunflowers for free and the millions of sunflowers are left for the most demanding, those who want something special or those who have time to search, in addition to money.

Company decision. At the moment, we have no alternatives.

If they start to pay less and less, the issue will get worse. It's like a paid temp job, if we work well. Like the delivery men who buy the van and pay for their health insurance. Self-employed, not self-employed.
It can get worse, if AS pays less and less for the batch of images, and if you lower the level, another will enter.

In any case, the ethics of AS, although it is a business, has always been honest with us. At the very least, they speak to us as a people.

Tenebroso · « **Reply #172 on:** October 16, 2020, 10:04 »

The last and I leave you alone.

If CorelDRAW buys Alamy, we already know the way, it serves customers.

Google or PayPal, Hawaii or Tesla, maybe, if they enter this market, they will pay us well for each file. However, there is an exaggerated offer of the files.

Now, free, but by professionals. It is, a brutal change in the industry. A quality add-on for your software. It is very well thought out. Great move from AS. For AS.

marthamarks · « **Reply #173 on:** October 16, 2020, 10:12 »

Quote from: Tenebroso on October 16, 2020, 10:04

Now, free, but by professionals. It is, a brutal change in the industry. A quality add-on for your software. It is very well thought out. Great move from AS. For AS.

I believe that sums it up in a nutshell.

This is definitely a great move for AS. And definitely not a great move for most of the rest of us.

I'm guessing that the reason Adobe didn't step up to the plate last spring when many contributors were crying out for them to fill the gap that SS was creating for us… was exactly this. We just didn't know it at the time.

cathyslife · « **Reply #174 on:** October 16, 2020, 10:29 »

Yep, they all had a plan in place. More $$ for them, less for us.

The only good news in the last couple of days is that us retirees are getting a 1.3% 😯 raise in December from SS. Not much, but at least they aren’t taking anything away (yet). Not enough to make up for the lost microstock revenue this year, though.

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Author Topic: Introducing the free collection from Adobe Stock (Read 97715 times)

Tenebroso

gillian vann

PaulieWalnuts

Tenebroso

Pauws99

Chichikov

vectorsforall

Jo Ann Snover

gillian vann

Digital

changingsky

PaulieWalnuts

PaulieWalnuts

changingsky

Shelma1

Tenebroso

thx9000

wds

Tenebroso

Evaristo tenscadisto

cathyslife

Tenebroso

Tenebroso

marthamarks

cathyslife

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