why not ?

July 26, 2007 by pmelcher.

While Johnathan klein, CEO of Getty is running to New York, leaving wife and children behind in rainy Seattle, to cheer up the investment community in a desperate effort to convince them that their stock is attractive, it seems that some sort of messy chaos is going on.

First, they bundled their footage in their constraining rights ready format, making it impossible for the little guys to license their offering ( too expensive). Great insightful article on the Stock Asylum.
Second, they start playing basic market laws with istockphoto. They are raising prices in order to see if the demand will follow. Even if they loose some customers in the process, they will gain with the increased price per image. Expect them to continue to do so until they find an equilibrium. If they are successful, they might even suck up the air from other microstock companies. Ooops, sorry, I mean photographers.

Finally, they have now decided to put all production of Filmmagic and Wireimage on the Getty site. Which is fine if you do not think about it too much. But consider this. Getty, like Mediavast, have free lancers who are paid on commission too. Thus, Mediavast photographers get double exposure by being on their original sites AND Getty. While the Getty photographers can only be on the Getty site, thus have a lesser chance to sell their images. What is the thinking, if any, behind this process ? Shouldn’t they be offering their free lancers the same opportunities that they offered the Wireimage and filmmagic photographers? Especially since Getty’s photographers tend to be much more talented than the mediavast’s ones. Expect strong rumbling from Getty’s freelancers, if not some departure if this keeps up.

Once you get too obsessive in trying the please your investors instead of your client base, you start making mistakes. Unfortunately for companies that are public or borrowed huge amounts from VC’s, they cannot do otherwise.

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