Thats been around for a while. Dont know more about it.

http://submit.shutterstock.com/earnings_schedule.mhtml

There's nothing here about royalties on team subscriptions, but there is a difference in monthly price based solely on the number of users (+$140 from 2 to 3 and +$75 from 3 to 4) and that's not going for number of reproductions or indemnity which would be part of the base 2 user package and not increase.

Where did the text you quote come from?

Thanks. I guess I had missed that part of the thread. It seems they are fudging the details on this just as with the varying cost to the buyer for ELs, all of which net the contributor $28. Sigh.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

And the raise from 250k to 500k print runs doesn't sound dramatic to me either.

Hmmm
17 newspapers in the US
3 UK newspapers

3 Australian magazines
29+ French magazines
13+ German magazines
9 Dutch magazines
36 UK magazines
and presumably a much larger number of US magazines - the list I looked at only looked at the top 50 in selected countries, and all of the US top 50 were over a million. (France and Germany would have had more in the next 50 in this print run.

So, you'd need to know how many of these use images from SS to know how significant the increased allowance is.

From my understanding you do get less, one subscription dl rather than 3.  "It's important to keep in mind that Shutterstock pays royalties on every single download, regardless of how many team members access a single account at one business."  If there is a single account then isn't there only one dl that 3 people use?

Based on my own work experience (outside of the photography world), I would think in other cases those three people would just share one account using one person's credentials - though this is technically not legal, I assume it is a common case. I used to work in environments where it was quite common to share one person's credentials to sites offering information, tutorials, work material etc.

I believe it is rather rare that 3 people within a company actually use the same image. Yes, someone could certainly come up with an example where that would be the case and make sense. However, in most cases I think you don't hire three designers to work on the same product. I think it's much more common to have three designers (e.g. one web designer, one social media manager, one doing the print designs) working on different things and using different images. To me it sounds like this subscription offer just allows those small teams to have each their own account with their own credentials.

A regular subs plan pays out up to 114% of the cost while a team subscription can payout 72% of the purchase price (assuming the contributors are at the highest royalty level for all payouts).  Images have been given more rights, possibly some downloads are lost, and contributors get paid a lot less.  It doesn't seem like a good deal to me, do you see it differently?

Well, I think you agree that your hypothetical, potential, theoretical payout calculations are far from reality. Because otherwise all agencies offering subscriptions would be bankrupt by now. So what's the point in discussing completely hypothetical numbers?

Yes they were best case scenarios for contributors.  If the best case for contributors shows that this plan is worse then what does that mean if you put in the actual numbers?  It's obvious that contributors will get a much lower % of the money under the team subscriptions than the regular subscriptions isn't it?

No, it isn't. It's playing around with unrealistic numbers which does not allow drawing conclusions for a totally different reality.

So if the max that contributors can make from the team subscription plans is more than 30% less than the max contributors can make from a team subscription plan, you think putting more realistic numbers in there will change things?  How so, what scenario makes this a better plan?

I don't need to make it a better plan. I have no detailed information or facts. Neither do you. You just deliberately try to make the plan look bad by using numbers that are wrong to start with.

Tickstock, I get 38c per dl. If this plan increases the number of DLs from a company, because they are having more people downloading our images, then I get more money. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.

Your argument is that what we care about is how much the customers pay per dl, not how much money we earn. I'm actually more interested in real money in my pocket than in theoretical prices paid by people I don't know.

So here we've got you suggesting that SS is paying a commission rate of more than 100% and it should keep doing that otherwise it's bad for suppliers, and on another thread we have Balex telling us that SS sells files for 16c each and that we all know it pays us a commission rate of 28% (so I suppose the 38c commissions I see are really 4.5c and I'm just deluded).

It all goes to show what a fabulously strange world it is when we deliberately use statistics to eliminate reality.

Personally, I've got my own theory, which is that 25x38c = $9.50 and that 35x38c = $13.30.
Unlike you, I have the idea that getting paid $13.30 is better than getting paid $9.50.

I'm even willing to back up my theory. If you send me $1,330 then I will send you back $950 immediately, and we can both feel good about having avoided getting ripped off.

My royalty rate wouldn't be lowered. My royalty rate is 38c.  How can 38c be a reduction from 38c?

Yes, I do realise you want to try to pretend that they pay us a percentage of the contracts, but in fact they don't and the percentage calculations people have done have been based on the total annual payout to all contributors as a percentage of the total annual take. I'm pretty sure that this scheme won't change that overall calculation by a thousandth of a decimal point.

It's a reasonable assumption that this is aimed at companies where people have been downloading once and then sharing that image across seats. So if this makes them download the image two or three times, that's all to the good. If two people download from the same account illegally, and now they download the same number of times from a more expensive account then nothing changes for me.

Contrary to your spurious mathematical construction, this is either neutral or beneficial for contributors. It might be even more beneficial for SS, too, that's possible, but we've know way of knowing, have we?

PS: I thought you knew the terms. Isn't this just multi-seat access to a subscription, with no changes to usage rights? Suggesting it is comparable to the Google Drive deal at iStock is simply ridiculous.

That's one way of looking at it.  I think it does matter how much the agency is taking in compared to how much we are making.  Unpopular view?
Isn't that one of the major problems with the depositphotos deal, paying sub royalties while charging much much more to buyers?  http://www.microstockgroup.com/depositphotos/the-german-shotshop-reseller-of-depositphotos/msg372250/?topicseen#new

Once again you are comparing apples and oranges, it seems to be a full-time hobby for you!  Overall percentages are meaningless because people are on different rates. I get 17% at iStock, but the average is probably around 20%. Are you happy with iSTock paying 20%? Apparently SS pays 28%, according to Balex, but you're suggesting that's unacceptable becuase you think "it matters how much the agency is taking in compared with how much we are making". So why are you happy with 20% but not with 28% (or maybe now 27.9999% now), and why do you make such a fuss about commission percentage changes of 0.00001% while iStock has been playing fast and loose with percentages for years. What about the (admittely semi-defunct) RC system?