May 2013 Microstock Update | MicrostockInsider

May 2013 Microstock Update Tweet

By Steve GibsonTue, 2013-05-28 06:10

A couple of months between posts always leaves time for a few big stories - no exception here!

There's usually a common thread in these news posts, and in trying to make sense of the last few of months there are a couple of (somewhat vague) common elements to most of the things that have happened:

Increasing Quality: Both the Yuri "quit" story, new collections and new agencies have all boasted premium or increased quality images and / or prices.
Pulling in all directions at once (aka a lack of a trend). Microstock continues to merge into what was called Traditional Stock, to a point where neither business really fits the description from just a few years ago. In fact I'm getting weary of the somewhat unstable tags of Traditional Stock and Macrostock. Microstock is still FAR from being "Mainstream Stock" and arguably never will be; the day that happens it probably won't be open to "anyone with a camera". (from a different point of view microstock became mainstream the day it sold more volume that macro)

All that said: The industry has felt like it is tearing apart and at the same time increasing quality while blurring into macrostock for the past 5 years (at least); people have ranted on forums, and dumped agencies, joined new ones, launched their own. So in essence this last few months news has a common thread... It's Microstock Business as Usual.

Yuri Quits Microstock

My first thought is that Yuri Arcurs stopped being a microstock photographer years ago when he became a production company; agreed that as a production company he was selling on microstock sites but the majority of microstockers are not really in the same class (even many of the full time ones).

Secondly, the headline I think is really misleading, Yuri has gone exclusive with Getty (and so iStockphoto), and I don't see it as quitting microstock. I'm not 100% on the details here but looking at his portfolio on iStock I can see 13k images (far less than his full portfolio); looking at the pricing slider, all but around 100 are available at the standard exclusive contributor prices. I'd call that microstock. (There's plenty more of his work which I assume is now only available at a premium price, including perhaps all the new work). Today peopleimages.com is selling xlarge images (3822x3063px) for $5; they seem to be running a special.

New Collections

Shutterstock announced plans for a new image collection called Offset. Offset is available via individual image licenses, not via a subscription, from offset.com (currently invitation preview). Shutterstocks existing contributors are not being used as a source for the images, many are sourced according to shutterstock from "dedicated assignment photographers and illustrators who have never licensed their images as stock before". The two sites will operate completely separately.

In the previous news post I mentioned stocksy the new venture from iStock founder Bruce Livingstone, since then the site has launched at stocksy.com. A couple of related blog posts throw a little more light on the site and what it stands for:

Techcrunch: istock founder returns to stock photography

A few glimpses into Stocksy through a Jim Pickerell Interview on Microstockgroup

Reminder

There are just a couple of days left to take advantage of the early bird pricing in addition to the bonus 20% discount for MicrostockExpo using the code "MSI2013" (Early bird ends 31 May)