The video says 3 million images, videos & audio - i.e. not the entire Shutterstock library. Any idea what contributors get paid for these uses?

Also, today SS announced they've hired a new General Counsel. Getty's former General Counsel - does that mean demand letters is a new business division at Shutterstock?

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shutterstock-names-john-lapham-as-general-counsel-301223494.html

Says 100M on here...

https://www.shutterstock.com/business/shutterstock-unlimited

Yeah I saw that, Discover the largest asset library available with 100M images, 4M videos, and 100K high-quality audio tracks. But the other page says 350 million images as of Sept 2020.

From what I've seen at API sites, they don't get anything licensed as Editorial only. I don't know what the "essential" collection is vs the complete, but on the POD sites, the "Essential" runs around 300,000 images and is even more cut rate, than the entire collection.

The video says 3 million images, videos & audio - i.e. not the entire Shutterstock library. Any idea what contributors get paid for these uses?

Also, today SS announced they've hired a new General Counsel. Getty's former General Counsel - does that mean demand letters is a new business division at Shutterstock?

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shutterstock-names-john-lapham-as-general-counsel-301223494.html

Without much deep thinking I'd guess we get a dime. API probably pays the lowest subscription rate possible. I might be wrong, but cheap and super multi-seat, unlimited, seems to lead towards, minimum, minimum, minimum.

"... does that mean demand letters is a new business division at Shutterstock? " Maybe but somehow I fear it means a new version of the contributor TOS with more legalese and disclaimers for anything that the agency would be held responsible for.

Did anyone ever find out if the money collected by Getty for those demand letters, ever found it's way back to any artists? The whole ting never seemed right. I mean, sending a letter to someone, claiming rights to a public domain image. And then sending one to the artist that had donated her works to the Library of Congress? Very twisted.

Quote from: SpaceStockFootage on February 08, 2021, 12:22

Says 100M on here...

https://www.shutterstock.com/business/shutterstock-unlimited

And at the bottom a rare specific number for the collection (they've taken those out most places in favor of the quarterly random guesses)

"370,878,081 royalty-free images and videos with 1,033,807 new stock assets added weekly."

Which means we have determined in these two linked pages from SS we have found four different numbers? 

Just for fun, here are mine: (as of today)

346,512,815 stock photos, vectors, and illustrations are available royalty-free.

229,942,877 stock photos
75,353,441 vectors and graphics
20,521,948 royalty-free stock videos

There's one for Illustrations but that could be photos or vectors or who know what?

Remove your content, terminate your account.... End of problem.

whatever what ss do adobestock will grow to become a monster

Since ss drop the price the sell is not better (for me) . I dont think is a price sell probleme. buyer want adobe cloud this is why they continue to buy there.

This is not a new program. It's the API program.

The API program is not new, but the Unlimited downloads for one annual fee is, I think.

The blog post was dated Monday (Feb and says "Introducing Shutterstock Unlimited: Keep your customers happy with unlimited access to world-class content through our API� and never worry about your usage costs going through the roof"

Not sure if I am right or wrong.

The page says that they are giving Unlimited access through API, nowhere it says that you can download unlimited.

SS tries to fill in all holes, even the smelling ones.

Quote from: Artist on February 09, 2021, 22:05

Not sure if I am right or wrong.

The page says that they are giving Unlimited access through API, nowhere it says that you can download unlimited.

Bottom line, I don't know if I care? I was thinking about the words in 2018 vs the words in 2021 and it struck me. Why do I care? I'm not a stock holder? If I get 10� for an API download, why should I care how they market the plan or the details? I'll still get 10� for a minimum.

So unlimited access, unlimited download, free API partners, instead of paying a fee to be an API partner. Why should I care?

Even worse, I hate to suggest this but maybe the new unlimited, free access is a good thing, and I'll get more of those stinking 10� downloads. Not excited about the potential or growth because of this new deal.

How will unlimited change anything for me? Will that be good or bad and does it matter at all?

why should you care?

Well, you used to get .25 (or up to .38) for these "sales", now you get .10    The more success they have with these schemes the more likely  the bean counters will decide that .10 is too much and they will drop it to something less.

Also they will probably replace other sales that might have been for more.

Thanks for posting a link to an official post about this program.

Kate's post had some concrete details - supposedly they were to have given this to contributors ahead of the program going live...

Unlimited content is selected from underperforming - 2 years old minimum and no sales - content from level 1 to 5 contributors. Level 6 contributors are exempt. This begs the question of what happens in January each year when everyone is level 1, but I'm assuming Shutterstock will grandfather level 6 folks for this purpose

Royalties are the same - a percentage of the price paid with a 10 cent minimum. I can't imagine there would be a case where the royalty is more than 10 cents given the unlimited downloads. No opt out permitted.

The only good news (less bad news??) is that the content is only usable on the platform that sets up the API partnership - not downloadable separately for other uses. Someone asked if contributors can see which items of theirs are included - no answer yet. I would guess not as some people might then delete those items.

A question was also asked about what would prevent an end user from skimming images or videos from the platform to use elsewhere - no answer. That's really not that different from people who steal content from an internet site that has legitimately licensed it - agencies don't go after such thefts.