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Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

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Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#81

Shutterstock and Getty do not make money from their stock photography catalog, most of their revenue comes from maintaining exclusive contracts for editorial content (news photos, videos, etc) and selling licenses to those assets. Someone could easily displace them as they haven’t done anything with their companies but shrink contributor earnings and buy out smaller stock asset companies in the last decade. Shutterst…

So basically Getty Image layoffs announced today?

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#82

Shutterstock and Getty do not make money from their stock photography catalog, most of their revenue comes from maintaining exclusive contracts for editorial content (news photos, videos, etc) and selling licenses to those assets. Someone could easily displace them as they haven’t done anything with their companies but shrink contributor earnings and buy out smaller stock asset companies in the last decade. Shutterst…

So basically Getty Image layoffs announced today?

Effective in 3-9 months. Today is about pretending the company is growing with employees.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#83
post #75

Shutterstock and Getty do not make money from their stock photography catalog, most of their revenue comes from maintaining exclusive contracts for editorial content (news photos, videos, etc) and selling licenses to those assets. Someone could easily displace them as they haven’t done anything with their companies but shrink contributor earnings and buy out smaller stock asset companies in the last decade. Shutterst…

You can't innovate your way out of basic economics. The value of a photograph has continued to decline year after year to the point where it is now ~$0. The licensing revenue pie is getting smaller and smaller, and so companies in the space have been shrinking and consolidating to adapt to it. That's all there is to it.

Shutterstock doesn’t sell digital assets, they sell the license to use assets. The value of a stock photograph for marketing has decreased YoY, but the value of the license to use that photograph has only gone up. The consolidation is a trick they play on shareholders to convince them they are gaining value through assets, even though the value of assets is $0.

That is why a good portion of their earnings calls are about miscellaneous vague initiatives defined as an acronym and how much they saved on operating capital through acquisitions and layoffs.

The only way to increase the value of a license is with exclusivity. In which case the only remaining innovation is to direct the value back to the contributor. Which in turn would shrink the company.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#84
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, please. I've generated many, many images. They are not hard to spot.

The bad ones are of course not hard to spot. The good ones you'll never notice.

Good ones /of what/?

Are we talking a human subject? Nature?

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#85

Shutterstock and Getty do not make money from their stock photography catalog, most of their revenue comes from maintaining exclusive contracts for editorial content (news photos, videos, etc) and selling licenses to those assets. Someone could easily displace them as they haven’t done anything with their companies but shrink contributor earnings and buy out smaller stock asset companies in the last decade. Shutterst…

Your first sentence is self-contradictory. They are making money from their stock photos/images/videos. By charging fees for usage.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#86

Anecdotal, but I haven't bought a stock image since Stable Diffusion was released. Edit: with Flux, you can't even tell the difference: https://blackforestlabs.ai/

There are plenty of businesses that think the same way and every time I see an ad with an image that's clearly AI-generated I steer clear of it. It looks cheap, hits the uncanny valley and is often a good sign of lowest effort possible.

While I also have a distaste for AI stock photos, their crappiness just highlights the fact that a stock photo already meant "This article does not need a picture to communicate anything, but I know that articles with a picture perform better than articles without, so I will exert the least possible effort and expense to add a picture to this article".

It's just that now there's an even cheaper way to do that.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#87

Shutterstock and Getty do not make money from their stock photography catalog, most of their revenue comes from maintaining exclusive contracts for editorial content (news photos, videos, etc) and selling licenses to those assets. Someone could easily displace them as they haven’t done anything with their companies but shrink contributor earnings and buy out smaller stock asset companies in the last decade. Shutterst…

Your first sentence is self-contradictory. They are making money from their stock photos/images/videos. By charging fees for usage.

Okay you go work there and write a better sentence on how the money is made.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#89
post #75

Shutterstock and Getty do not make money from their stock photography catalog, most of their revenue comes from maintaining exclusive contracts for editorial content (news photos, videos, etc) and selling licenses to those assets. Someone could easily displace them as they haven’t done anything with their companies but shrink contributor earnings and buy out smaller stock asset companies in the last decade. Shutterst…

You can't innovate your way out of basic economics. The value of a photograph has continued to decline year after year to the point where it is now ~$0. The licensing revenue pie is getting smaller and smaller, and so companies in the space have been shrinking and consolidating to adapt to it. That's all there is to it.

I'd argue that the value of a photograph is not $0. The problem is rather that its actual value is lower than the $200 that Getty wants for a 3MP picture of a hamburger.

I've been in projects where we cleared the rights for every picture, and it's always the same: either we blow the budget on two pictures with strong usage restrictions or we replace them all with CC alternatives.

Perhaps photographs need their Steam moment.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I can't afford real images of real people and can't tell these images are shit, but you can rest assured that I didn't take any short cuts on the product!"

Real images of real people, although slightly unrealistically racially diverse and very unrealistically attractive, and absolutely not working for the company they're standing around a laptop for... is that really any better? Look at us, we're so serious we can licence shutterstock garbage?

I swear Microsoft is half the market for this. I can't remember the last time I saw them for an image which did not give off that exact vibe in over a decade.

It's pure slop, of the non-AI kind.

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