If you participate in membership/subscription, you are lowering price of stock videos.  Don't do it.

I'm not in the membership thing on pond5, but whilst doing a quick search on hyperstock, I've found some of my clips.
In a nutshell can someone explain the difference between what pond5's membership is compared to hyperstock? I thought the membership was the same as a hyperstock model?

Hyperstock is an unlimited subs program. A customer pays a modest fee, say 20 dollars a month and can then download whatever he or she likes without limit.

And pond5 has not yet explained how much contributors will earn per download.

I am not part of the membership program, but from what I have heard you get a money for every sale. The membership plan is nit jnlimited and supposedly will work out to be 2-8 dollars per file for the customer and I suppose artist get a normal subs commission. I have no idea how much that is.

Again, I am not a member and reporting what I heard.

But membership is a plan with a monthly  limit.

But if Hyperstock goes live again why should anyone buy your files from pond5 or Shutterstock when they can download thousands or files for a small monthly fee?

For years pond5 has raged against such sites and scolded all artists who dared to take part in such agencies.

Now they are doing it themselves and hijacking contributor content without asking them first.

And the reason they are not asking is because they know the individual contributor will not make any significant money, but for the agency owners it will be a goldmine.

Unlimited or cheap sub sites get significantly less uploads and have much smaller libraries than normal agencies. Because people are not stupid and see no reason to upload a 1000dollar production to a site where at best they can hope to earn a few cents per download.

But my main gripe, is that they did not ask artists before taking the content.

Send an email to everyone, direct them to a page with information and a large �Opt In� button and all is fine.

Then the artist can make an informed choice.

But until now...they haven�t...and they force you to opt out TWICE before removing your content (or not selecting it).

Thanks Cobalt. Yes it is worrying to say the least. Do you know when Hyperstock will be live / or how long it has been?
It all seems very secretive!

It reminds me of Getty's Premium Membership. And that sucks!!!

Pond5's resonse again on Pond5 artist forum.


gregp5 2020-02-13 17:50
Hi guys,

I know many of you are already communicating directly with our Support Team, but I thought an extra message here would clarify the situation even further.

Hyperstock is not live, and we are not launching or marketing anything at the moment. You found it while we were still working on it in a test phase prior to the launch of any go-to-market efforts. Aside from the couple of artists who signed up last night, we have made no sales and no content has been downloaded.

Clearly many of you are upset though and I�d like to address your concerns since it means a lot to us. While we tried to communicate our intentions with Hyperstock in the public Town Hall, several forum posts, and numerous individual conversations, it's obvious from the reactions here that we weren't as clear as we intended. Let me be perfectly clear: anybody who wants to opt out of this program can do so - just let us know. This was always our intention and we are sorry if we have upset anyone with our communication shortcomings. We will also try to improve communications and options in the future.

Hyperstock was conceived as Pond5�s answer to the growing number of unlimited download subscription sites that have proliferated over the last year or so. Like it or not, there is now a large buyer base that is only interested in an unlimited content subscription product. No, it is not TV/film or big budget advertisers but a growing group of social/digital producers that produce content frequently but on very tight budgets. We know because we frequently survey our customer base, we follow the data internally/externally, and we hear it directly from customers who call us. As some of you have correctly pointed out, competing subscription sites do have much smaller libraries than Pond5 and Hyperstock will similarly be a very limited library (less than 5% of content). Subscription sites are growing in number and collection size, and as they grow, budget-conscious buyers are tempted to trade depth and breadth for cost savings. This is the reality of the market in 2020.

While we do want to enter this space, and secure that subscription revenue for our contributors, we also want to do it in a way that protects our core marketplace business. This is incredibly important to us, we have as much to lose as you do if we do not do it well, and we would not launch a product like this if we thought we couldn�t do it. Again, I encourage you to re-watch the Hyperstock segment from our last Town Hall, or email Support for full details of the protections we�ve put in place.

Most of the comments here about Hyperstock have been negative - and that�s fine. Everyone is entitled to have their say on this forum. I�ll share with you, however, that many of you have reached out to us directly since our Town Hall to specifically request inclusion in Hyperstock and there is currently a deep waiting list of interested artists who realize that a subscription is a good way to monetize older, unsold content.

We know the 2nd half of 2019 was a difficult period and we are not yet out of the woods. We believe we�ve identified the reasons for the slowdown and we�re working hard to turn things around. While we do that, however, we�ll continue to pursue new opportunities in this evolving market. But certainly your consent to participate in any specific programs, including Hyperstock, is in your hands. If you�d like to get in touch and request to be included or excluded, please contact support and we will prioritize your request prior to launch.

As always, we are reachable. I�ve got phone calls scheduled with a bunch of you for tomorrow to go over questions, so if you�d like to get on that list, just shoot me an email.

Thanks

In my mind the content was stolen and they got caught.
Now we have the usual corporate double speak and lies.

Still no apology for using our content without permission.
Still no statement on how the royalty is broken down.

Licensing and Copyright are meaningless in this day and age. It's literally a free for all.

They have been advertising Hyperstock since October:
https://twitter.com/GetHyperstock/status/1182428245557428224
https://www.facebook.com/pg/hyperstock/posts/

Where are our Sales Reports?

Many thoughts for the moment. I dislike reading "give us a call" we do not all live in US or speak fluently English and this reflects and to our content.

The one thought that crossed my mind and can't be solved is that promotion of hyperstock with all those emoticons or whatever they called and the fake millenial or whatever gen style language. What on earth is the target client group? Teenagers?

.

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on February 16, 2020, 10:17

� there is currently a deep waiting list of interested artists�

Is there a difference between a 'deep list' and a 'long list'?

How deep is a piece of string?

Have they given out a guidance how much downloads earn?

 Any kind of estimates on a page so artists can make an informed decision?

Make Hyperstock an �Opt In� and all the negativity disappears.

Hijacking content without consent and stubbornly refusing  to inform their community directly looks like they have to hide something.

If they really believed in Hyperstock they would not force artists to confirm twice to have their content removed.

So why not send that email?

Why don�t they believe that artists will opt in?

Why do they have to hijack content without explicit consent?

ETA:

I just found a lot of my photos on Hyperstock. Many of them sell every week or when they are in season are reliable sellers. Some of them are on page 1 for keyword searches on Shutterstock.

It is unbeliavble that pond5 is trying to kill my reliable income on good agencies with their unlimited subs experiment.

I wrote to them again to make it clear that of course I want my photos also removed, just like the videos.

I get 38 cents - 2 dollars on average for every sale, plus the occasional special license.

Hyperstock is an attack on my well selling files.

Not funny, this is really serious.

I got a very kind email from pond5 support that my account has now been opted out of Hyperstock.

I�ll check in a few days if my pics are gone and will post back here.

I got emails from

Acquisition Associate

and

Administrative & Customer Care

so I guess this is both support and content team.

But I just wrote to contributor support.