PHOTOGRAPHY & CULTURE

The stock photography industry needs to be unbundled

The stock photography industry is failing on its own accord, not because of macroeconomic conditions. My comment on Unsharpmasked: 2008 Stock photo market crash - So where do we stand today?

The macroeconomic condition is a small contributor to the failure of stock photo agencies, but not the cause: the real cause is the failure of the agencies to adapt to the changing industry demand and supply.

Any attempt to blame the failure of PS Collection and DRR on macroeconomic conditions is neglecting to address the real reasons behind the failure: prices, demand and supply.

Which I think you point out: the fact is it’s difficult to understand the exact impact of the credit crunch without digging into the financial statements.

Photographers need to reduce their reliance on stock because the demand for stock has changed: not just in price, but in who wants stock, how they want to use, how quickly and easily they want to get it.

Reducing the transaction costs (time, effort, legal, price transparency and comparison) of acquiring stock might be the biggest need in the stock photography business.

We need to unbundle the functions of the traditional stock photography agency. There is no fundamental need for the image delivery and management platform to be delivered by the same company that makes the market and connects buyers and sellers.

Platform
What we need is a quality, powerful open-sourced platform to allow photographers to control their own images in their own ways. We need a platform and a community of developers similar to Wordpress or Movable Type. Blogs exploded because people were given the tools to create and publish on their own using the range of hosted and non-hosted options; why can’t the same thing happen with stock photography?

Digital Railroad and Photoshelter Archive are not enough (even the new Photosheleter 2.0): photographers should be able to host their own data in case (when?) the companies delivering the platforms die. Photographers right now have an abundance of hosted services to use for license and sell their photographs, but why can’t we see similar platforms emerge for photographers to publish, control, host and promote their own library of images?

Market-Making
Agencies would still have a powerful role: agencies would still set the rules of exchange, organize buyers and sellers and promote images: but instead of the images residing on their platforms, the images could reside on photographers’ servers. Agencies would still use their experience and ability to connect buyers and sellers to deliver value to photographers and photography buyers.

Obviously this disaggretated model would shift around some the economic value in the stock photography business: but perhaps the industry is failing because we have not developed or scaled platforms that allow the economic value to shift in ways the industry desperately needs.

In essence:

  • Decouple the the platform delivery and market-making components of the traditional stock photography agencies.
  • Develop open platforms that allow photographers to control their own data, on their own servers, using open-sourced software, “promoted” by stock agencies.
  • Let agencies focus on making markets, reducing transaction costs, making prices and image comparisons more transparent.

Imagine if Ditigal Railroad were able to refine their software and open up the code to allow every photographer to download and install the software to host their own images? A community of developers would emerge around the platform, creating tweaks and modifications to increase the functionality, create more interoperability and help photographers customize the platform to fit their goals. Digital Railroad could focus on building the community around the platform and create the market around the images hosted by all photographers using the Digital Railroad platform.

Digital Railroad will probably never pursue or be able to execute this fundamental shift in their technology and business model; however, this inability to shift is what creates the opportunity for new players unburdened by old business models.

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Interested in learning more about how photographers can create new ways to succeed in the photography industry? Start with my 5 Lessons series…


SIMILAR THOUGHTS
  • Photoshelter closing their Collection stock agency to focus on Personal Archive
  • Digital Railroad continues the “rebalancing” of the photography industry
  • What will the stock photography business look like in 10 years?
  • Photrade: A photography sharing, licensing and syndication service without a compelling value proposition
  • Start Here


    • This entry was written by Taylor Davidson, posted on October 20, 2008 at 13:42, filed under Business & Society, Photography and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

    Viewing 4 Comments

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      Taylor: interesting insights. I know nothing about the inner workings of the blog companies, however, they do not have the inherent problem that pro photography has -- that is, a small addressable market. Millions of people use blogger and word press, by contrast, the # of "pro" photographers is in the low hundreds of thousands by most estimates. So I'm not sure an open platform system would work.

      Secondly, storing digital assets and providing an e-commerce layer isn't as simple as hosting a few bytes of blog data. Not to say that it can't be done, but we have a ton of scripts that are necessary to control everything from conversion of JPG/RAWs into thumbnails to e-commerce systems that process transactions, email the client, and generate a downloadable file.

      I would personally like to see more adoption of standards so that distribution of your images from a hub like PhotoShelter to any number of destination sites (whether it's Getty or a boutique agency) could be as simple as something like sending an e-mail. Ultimately, however, I don't think the industry has the economic incentive to develop such a system -- and often, what's good for the photographer isn't necessarily needed by the buyer, and vice versa.
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      I'm hoping to launch a contest on behalf of a Very Large Vacation Resort on Flickr...there's a few different design details being considered, but here's one I'm pushing:

      Guests at the resort can submit photos from their stay to a group hosted on Very Large Photo Sharing Site. Some days later, client chooses a couple of pictures to license for a postcard [or something] to be sold/given away at the resort. The price/license will be a few hundred dollars or maybe a couple free nights at the resort. Definitely <$1k. It will undoubtedly result in an amazing picture.

      How does the "new photography industry" work within next-gen marketing/business model possibilities like I just described? I just went to photoshelter and someone is trying to charge me $1300 to license a photo for advertising/web use in the USA for 1 year. It seems plain to me that this price is completely ludicrous.

      (Bear in mind that, contextually, I'm sitting here with a very expensive M.F.A. on my resume)

      I'm not very familiar with photoshelter but it seems like the photographer probably sets the price. So is this pricing symptomatic of the larger problem?

      This is a killer space, ripe for reinvention. Photoshelter looks awesome, but it seems plain that there is room for more disruption...all it takes is an appetite (yes, and probably some capital/runway ;-)

      [Did I just make an oblique Guns 'N Roses reference???]
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      Allen: thanks for the detailed response, especially since you obviously know the business so well.

      What are your biggest barrier to getting images and photographers? What are your biggest barriers to getting buyers for images?

      What is the difference between a "pro" and an "amateur" in your mind? I have my thoughts ("if you're not eating from the money you make from photography, you're not a pro"), but I'd interested in your thought especially since it has a huge bearing on how you approach the market for your products.

      Actually, in my mind the open-sourced platform would be given away for free. Give away the software, create a platform for developers to create plug-ins to manage images, fans, customizations for photographers. Provide (free and paid) services to help photographers host and customize their own stock solutions. Learn from the lessons of companies that have created platforms, not just products. You're already doing a tremendous amount to create a community around photography (I was a PS Collection member): you could leverage that and create an entire ecosystem around hosted stock solutions.

      Many photographers have asked me "what should I do?" because of the financial instability of the stock photography business and the primary agencies, and I'm sure you've also heard photographers' pain. People are concerned about re-tagging their images, managing keywords, reconnecting with buyers from the dead agencies: people are learning something about the failures and the heavy switching costs between platforms. Saying "we won't go under" isn't enough: you have the opportunity to do far more to show photographers a better solution.

      Not all photographers will want this, of course: many won't want to manage their own systems, learn about web development or managing their software and hosting solutions. But that's what Movable Type and Wordpress have learned, and it's a key part of why they offer both the hosted and non-hosted paths.

      I completely agree that standards would be a great way to address the platform problem, and I agree that the industry probably does not have the economic incentive to all band together to create interoperability. But don't you have the opportunity to create standards? Couldn't you win clients (photographers and photo buyers) by showing the path yourself?

      Re: Storing digital assets and e-commerce layer: you obviously know what goes into this far more than I do. It's not a trivial problem, but there are many software and web companies that have dealt with similar problems with managing massive flows of unstructured and structured data. Think of it as creating an API between the cloud of hosted software platforms and Photoshelter's e-commerce market-making website.

      What are the biggest barriers for photo buyers? It's not just about prices: people buy microstock not because it's great, but because the process is easy: the license terms are easy to understand, easy to use and the pricing comparison between images is transparent. The lack of price transparency between RF / RM and in comparing images is a strategic mistake: the transaction costs (time, effort, energy) are a significant barrier to closing a sale.

      The demand for images has splintered: there are so many more media, more channels, more ways to communicate with people that are demanding to use images, but the stock photography industry is still tied to an old business and operational model that has not adapted our changing use of images.

      I apologize for the long response: suffice it to say I've got more ideas, but would love to get more of your thoughts...
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      Great thoughts above. Some kind of central platform will always be needed to create a centralized directory of images buyers can access. A photographer-hosted system would still need a way to feed image content into a central repository for 24/7 browse-ready capability. At the very least, we're talking about a Bloglines/Google Reader for images that doubles as a searchable online catalog and ecommerce engine. Perhaps a content directory powered by photographer-submitted RSS feeds is the next evolution in the space. That would then be independent of the hosted/non-hosted debate, since either could apply. Patent pending. :) (Perhaps it already exists.) Even then, media management would be an issue.

      Wordpress, Movable Type, Blogger, etc, were revolutionary because they enabled web publishing for non-coders, for free. Wordpress then attracted users in droves because it enabled web design for non-designers in the form of free site templates, and software development for non-developers in the form of plugins, again, for free. Increasing user scale led to more motivated developers, which has further led to an upwards spiral of usage. Is the "obstacle" in this case painful enough, and is the "enabling benefit" strong enough, to drive mass adoption of an open source solution? Or would most aspiring and/or accomplished "pro" photographers be interested in focusing on photography, rather than technology? I lean towards Allen's comment above in thinking that the volume of photographers "desiring" the ability to host, manage, and distribute their own content may not be sufficient to economically support an API model, or an open source community that might develop one. But then, we all might have said that about open source in general in the 1990s.

      It's interesting to note that Automattic (the for-profit company managing Wordpress software), in an over-simplified nutshell, leverages the open source community (centered around Wordpress.org) to develop and enhance its core software, but generates revenue through upgrades and premium services offered to users of its free, hosted community at Wordpress.com (which uses its core software).

      I seem to be rambling a bit, and will now stop.
     

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