A step back

If we stop for a little while and catch our breath, we can see that the stock photo industry is doing better, not worse. 10 years ago, no agencies was posting revenues of $800 million as Getty now boast. Quite the opposite, Sygma, one of the big three (SIPA and Gamma being the other two) was loosing $20 million a year, when Corbis purchased them. Gamma was not doing better and Sipa was also financially wobbling.

For all the nay sayers of the stock photo industry, this might come as a shock. But the industry is doing quite well, thank you. Cepic has passed from 600 participants to 800 in one year, and the market itself is expanding. New blogs have appeared, there is so much new information . Even granddaddy PDN had to call in “kids friendly” PDNpulse to keep up with what is now a daily mass production of industry  related news.

New business model are thriving. Microstock, whether it is cannibalizing 8 or 15 % of the traditional market still discovered millions of new image buyers worldwide. Image Buyers that pay for a RF license. what is wrong with that ?

The editorial space has never seen so many new agencies in the last 10 years. And some great ones too:  VII, for one, created thanks to the Corbis purchase of SABA. In the celebrity space, there are more agencies now than ever, with sales of images that topped $4 million for one set, last year. I had never seen that before.

New Royalty free production companies are blooming here and there. Photoshelter, IPNstock and multi millionaire Digitalrailroad are throwing independent photographers into the market, hoping to cash in on the surge, along with Scoopt and other Citizen Image. Even Flickr, Zoomr and other  rrrr’s are good news. The worldwide interest for images is growing. If people are taking pictures and posting them for everyone to see, you can be sure that that they look at other pictures. and they want to see more. Where and how do you think they learned to be so good.

New photo festival are opening ( none are closing) and countries with little or no photo sales in the past are now building their own distribution channel.

Certainly, some price per image are dropping but the price per photo agency is certainly not. $200 million here, $35 million there. Could you sell your photo agency for that price 10 years ago ?

On the reverse side, I read or hear little of massive bankruptcies or  monumental crashes. The nay sayers  will say it is coming. But of course, even in a booming market, companies fail. But they fail by not recognizing opportunities when they  arise and holding on to recipes that worked 10 years ago.

The photo industry has never been healthier. In an extremely rapid state of flux, yes, but healthy.

This entry was posted on July 3, 2007 at 7:44 am and is filed under flickr, SIPA, CEPIC, corbis, getty, Royalty free. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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