Ah ha no not the doom and gloom patrol. But what if someone comes up with something totally new and revolutionary and blows the current agencies out of the water.

Says it's not so and could never happen?

Have you heard of SPOTIFY?

Spotify�s Daniel Ek created a free, Facebook-enabled platform that could save the recording industry from piracy�and iTunes.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2012/01/04/spotifys-daniel-ek-the-most-important-man-in-music/

There's a bit more to this story, before I jump off the cliff and into their fandom:

Trouble is, Spotify isn�t really making money. According to its latest filing with Companies House in the U.K., where it is based, Spotify posted a pre-tax loss of �26.5 million ($41.5 million) for 2010, wider than the �16.1 million it lost the previous year.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2011/10/11/spotify-loses-42-million-on-licensing-costs/

But say someone came up with something new, to license images to the masses, via a subscription plan, using a similar cloud principle. (pretty much what take your favorite music anywhere does, for a subscription) Or is this old school and the only way it would work is Video and TV, in which case we have... Kindle. 

Just pointing out that when people think of the music industry and iTunes or YouTube or whatever. Here comes a new player and shakes up the whole game.

Could that happen to Stock Imaging again? Is there a large enough demand to make it worth investing millions into something revolutionary?

And I thought your posts were always long winded, there you go and top it with a 5 page article

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah. How's that just a one liner? LOL   

Eh, I'm not that interested in music, and I couldn't care less what my friends are listening to.  But what would stop me from just grabbing the audio, saving it, and then not using the service?

Same with images.  You can't really control it when it's out there, so giving it away for free guarantees you 0 income.

I think it operates a bit like internet radio but on demand. I'm sure someone will work out how to strip it but the idea is that you don't store the music on your computer you stream it from the "cloud". When you stop paying for the subscription you can't listen to it.

I suppose anything is possible, but microstock is about as cheap and easy to use as it could be. So, I'm not sure how much it would be worth it to try to reinvent the wheel.

I guess there was some effort to incorporate images into some blog software or MS Word a while back (from what I remember), but it didn't seem like much came of that collaboration.

The market for imaging will start to come back when buyers start to understand that crowdsourcing inevitably delivers cr@p and the whole idea of getting it dirt cheap off "the internet" loses it's glow.  People in design roles will see better imaging in use by competitors and be unable to find it on the microstock sites they're using themselves.

Microstock prices are now so low that only hobbyists and wannabes will continue to participate in the long term.      People with real talent in imaging - i.e. an aesthetic sense - will gradually migrate to new channels.   Which have yet to appear. 

I don't see how the Spotify model can work for images that need to be incorporated into something in another piece of software - Photoshop, InDesign, some HTML somewhere, etc.

All the streaming music services use some sort of DRM and  although I'm sure people do try to get around that, you can't just save an MP3 file when listening to Spotify. And with paid services (Spotify or Rhapsody) you need to connect to the service at least once a month for the mobile saved files to continue to play (and those play only in their app, not any music player of your choice).

If you just looked at pictures, it might be analagous, but as that's not what people do when they license stock images, a whole lot of additional software would be needed - and adoption of that DRM software by the majority of image editing, page layout and web design software - before you could even think about using this approach.

And then there's the issue of how you sell enough ads to make money with the free version (versus paid) of the service...

I can connect with Spotify on my AV receiver and record directly to usb stick, or via the rec out mode to an external device (MD player/recorder in my case).
Same on the computer, lots of software out there to record what is played on computer.
Additional option, every computer has a soundcard with an out connector, just make a bridge to the input channel and you can record, or make a connection to an external device and record.  No DRM is going to stop that.

Patrick H.

I do think someone will come up with something better than the microstock sites one day.  There's been a few interesting ideas talked about in previous threads here.  A lot of our earnings go to the sites at the moment and buyers could pay less if we kept more of the money.  Hopefully someone will come up with a good way for us to do transactions with buyers more efficiently.

None of us can stop what the masses want because it means $$$ for the companies offering it (see the illegal use of Megaupload - high demand -> lots of cash).

One day the companies understand that concept (I mean really understand that concept) they will do what Megaupload did (and all the other one-click file sharing sites) and offer all content free and payout advertising revenue proportionally to download numbers.

SS is the easiest example. We're getting paid between 25 to 38 cents per regular download for which the customers pay the subscription fee.

Assume that SS drops the paid subscription plans and implements free access to EVERYONE and ALL the images on Shutterstock to download UNLIMITED images paying us contributors accordingly through ad revenue shown on the SS site.

As we all know Google earns insane amounts of money through online advertising, making $37 Billion (unaudited in 2011) not charging a single cent for a huge range of products and services accessible for everyone online.

This could actually generate more traffic, more people, more downloads and most importantly more revenue for SS (and therefore higher payouts for us) if it was offered "for free".

In the end, why would I care if SS pays me 0.2 cents 2 cents per image download (through ad revenue) if my portfolio gets 25.000 downloads a month instead of 1.000 downloads a month @ 38 cents a pop (paid by a customer?

Eventually, our images are ending up online for free ANYWAY, whether we like it or not (well we don't like it) BUT the fact remains that the file sharing/link sharing sites (heroturk0 etc.) won't have the "premium" first hand content anymore as SS would offer the content brand new, first hand FOR FREE anyway. They would take image sharing site out of business in a snap.

I know not many will like this idea but even if it takes 20 years, we'll get there...

I actually believe - and I've posted this before - that after the subscription model comes 'free', supported by ads.  We'll get there.

Actually what you and Click_Click say may come true in which case, nothing of mine will be up on Microstock. Why would any of us supply the images for nothing?

Or do you mean, everything will be free and we'll get a percentage of the advertising revenue?

No income, no work. Or to quote my late Uncle Ed: "I'd rather sit for nothing than work for nothing."

(he was talking about profit margins and business expenses involved producing a product)

... Or do you mean, everything will be free and we'll get a percentage of the advertising revenue? ...

I'm not sure if you read my entire post but here it is again:

... In the end, why would I care if SS pays me 0.2 cents per image download (through ad revenue) if my portfolio gets 25.000 downloads a month instead of 1.000 downloads a month @ 38 cents a pop (paid by a customer? ...

I'm sorry, I made a mistake with my example. Of course this wouldn't work at 0.2 Cents payout for each download. I'm talking about 2 cents per download financed through ad revenue.

So if I "sold" 25,000 licenses a month (free download - ad financed revenue splitting) at 2 cents a pop = $500
Right now, I might sell 1,000 licenses a month at 38 cents = $380

Not to mention that our images end up on file sharing sites as it is and no agency is taking serious action (or is going for a law suit) to reclaim lost royalties. That situation couldn't get any worse anyway.

I would pull my images out of ad financed Microstock in a heartbeat if I made less money, don't get me wrong.

And high quality RF and RM will still stay the way it is now as there will be always clients looking for unique premium and exclusive content.

If SS made it clear that selling ads would lower the lower the prices which buyers pay and increase the royalties which submitters earn, would buyers and submitters go along with it?

I prefer that buyers feel that have some sense of investment in the content they are using, otherwise, it has no value to them, and they will feel free to abuse it.  Incorrect usages, distribution, etc.  Also, as a buyer, I wouldn't want my searches, which is part of the service I pay for with my download price, to be cluttered with crap ads.

...yada yada yada... So maybe you .02 cents wasn't a bad prediction after all? ...

Racephoto, I don't want to really dive into this right now. Let me put it this way:

- If ad revenue shared commission would be higher than what I get now selling my stuff in Microstock I'm all for it.

- If ad revenue shared commission would be lower, I'm all against it.

I do need to make a living somehow with the content I have and I'm trying to exploit all possibilities that are available.

I do not care whether visitors numbers, page views, site hits, hosting spanks, click through rates, impression counts and god knows what else they call that stuff that generates billions of $$$ for Google and Co. - I was simply referring to the idea to have ad revenue pay us instead of the direct customer.

I hope this is clear enough. Again I would like to remind that English is not my native tongue, so everyone, bear with me to make my point.

Sean is right about ad polluted search results but on the other hand I and a bunch of million ABP users (and the like) didn't manage to put Google out of business just yet either.

Give the masses what they want. High profile clients who have the $$$ can still pay top $$$ for ad free services, no biggie.

However, there is a horde of image/content hungry people out there who don't give a rat's a$$ whether there are ads in the search results AS LONG AS THE CONTENT IS "FREE".

Imagine that Megaupload alone at one point was responsible for 4% of all internet traffic worldwide. This is a sh!tload of traffic!!!

Regardless of the concept, there will always be a plus side and there will always be a downside to it (sorry for this clumsy comparison).

In the end you can't make all 7 billion people happy at the same time...

Micro stock industry was invented with the amateur and hobby guys in mind,  nobody in their right frame of mind would ever dream about, that pros, etc would fraternize in such places. Nobody ever dreamed about it would get this big either.

Today its got out of hand and the main agencies will start to impose much tougher editing and acceptance of applicants, there is no room for diletans or generics anymore. This is a good thing and will benefit many of us,  others will fade away.

Buyers wants micro and thats why it will survive but in the next couple of years I think we will see thousands of contributors booted out or made redundant.