iStock
| iStock LP
|
|
|---|---|
 |
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| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 2000 |
| Seat | Calgary (Canada) |
| management | Bruce T. Livingstone, President |
| Branch | service |
| Website | www.istockphoto.com |
iStock , formerly iStockphoto , is an international picture agency for photos, graphics, videos and audio files.
history
The company was founded in May 2000 by Bruce Livingstone in Calgary, Canada. IStockphoto was originally a free site for sharing stock photos. After its initial success, iStockphoto used a system for paying very small amounts ("micropayment") and became the first microstock agency where photos could be legally licensed for editorial and advertising purposes for as little as one dollar.
On February 9, 2006, iStockphoto was acquired for $ 50 million by Getty Images , the world's largest stock photo agency group. Since then, the different offers of the classic agency with the microstock model have been mutually complemented. Today, successful iStock photographers can submit images to Getty Images without further examination and joint platforms have been created for the secondary marketing of image material.
The original model of offering images for one dollar has been adapted repeatedly over the years in order to be able to offer the newly created market of small and medium-sized users a wide range at comparatively low prices. The picture prices today are differentiated according to the size of the required picture and the effort that went into the production of the pictures. Artistically high-quality images can therefore cost 100 euros or more today, while a wide range of images in web sizes is still available for one to two euros.
As a privately held company, iStock does not publish any official sales or profit figures. As part of the takeover by the investment firm Hellman & Friedman , CEO Bruce Livingstone announced 2007 sales of $ 71.9 million, of which 20.9 million were paid out to artists. According to Getty CEO Jonathan Klein, iStock had sales of $ 200 million in 2009, an increase of 40% over the previous year.
Artist
As an agency, iStock represents photographers, illustrators, videographers and audio artists from all over the world. In the early years, iStock recruited many artists in the vicinity of its own customers as well as enthusiastic amateurs, whose volume and quality were often insufficient for the inclusion in classic photo agencies. The higher-priced stock photo agencies often had intransparent and lengthy recording procedures, while iStock made it easy to register via the Internet.
An artistic community also formed around the picture agency, in which many artists could quickly develop their talents with the support of others. The concrete and quick feedback from the picture editors ("inspectors") helped to improve the quality, so that from around 2004/05 increasingly more professional picture material was brought into the agency.
Artist royalty payments
The artists at iStock each receive a share of the license income earned for their image material. In the early years, the artists were each given 20% of the money raised.
After the first competitors appeared in the microstock market, iStock introduced a system of ranks ("canisters") and a distinction between artists who offer their material exclusively via iStock and non-exclusive artists whose images are licensed through various agencies can. Non-exclusive artists continue to receive the original 20% share, regardless of their rank. Exclusive artists receive shares between 25 and 40% of the income, depending on the number of paintings they have already sold. For the first stage, which entitles the holder to exclusivity, initially 500 and later 250 sales were required. Further levels are reached after 2,500, 10,000 and 25,000 sales.
In September 2010, iStock announced that in future the artists' participation will no longer be calculated on the historical sales, but only on the sales of the previous and current year. At the same time, reductions in holdings were announced. From January 2011, depending on the sales level, non-exclusive artists will only receive 15 to a maximum of 20 percent of the income from their pictures. Exclusive artists receive between 25 and 45 percent for the classic microstock collections. In the higher-priced collections, the participation for exclusive artists will be reduced to 22 to 28 percent.
According to its own admission, iStock currently pays out around 1.7 million US dollars per week (as of October 2010) to artists worldwide.
criticism
With the microstock market, iStock has given new customer groups access to good image material. Due to the increasing spread of the Internet and the easier possibilities of using four-color prints, even in short runs, for advertising and promotional material, the need for high-quality images increased. At the same time, many customer groups were not able to spend four-digit amounts on photos from traditional picture agencies.
However, with the creation of this new, inexpensive segment, some photographers feared a general devaluation of photography. The generally available access to commercial images from just one euro led to price pressure on classic product and commissioned photography. At the same time, the microstock agencies increasingly gained shares in the old customer segments of the higher-priced agencies. This put an additional source of income for professional photographers under pressure in their traditional business environment.
At the same time, it is undisputed that iStock has given many artists the opportunity to earn a regular income from a sideline job. Over the years, the number of artists who only produce material for iStock has risen sharply. However, it is unclear whether the number will outnumber those of photographers who have suffered losses due to the changes in the business model. The assumption is that, at least in the industrially highly developed countries, photographers have tended to lose some of their business volume, while artists from Eastern European countries, for example, have benefited from the global use of agency images.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://www.istockphoto.com/de/about-us
- ↑ https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=25912441
- ↑ Photoscala - about the sales figures from iStockphoto
- ↑ Getty relies on amateur pictures and the iPad - FAZ article via Getty Images and iStockphoto
- ↑ iStockphoto ( Memento of the original from September 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Announcement of the new shareholding structure from 2011
- ↑ iStockphoto Forum ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Forum contribution by COO Kelly Thompson (engl.)
