Look ! I have a banana in my ear

February 20, 2008 by pmelcher.

London, UK, Feb. 20, 2008. Designers, advertising creatives, web designers and editorial picture editors can now get top quality images to bring their creative work to life for ‘whatever they want to pay’ through innovative new UK-based online stock image library www.moodboard.com

Moodboard, the company with the cool website that invented the 20% , 10 year, world exclusive representation for pro photographers is revolutionizing, yet again, the photo industry. In a typical, “mm, what can I do that no else had done before so maybe we can sell some images” moment, they just launched a “price your own image” scheme.

Copying a move by the music industry, the band Radiohead put their album online and asked people to pay whatever price they wanted, Moodboard goes full speed into the same path. Difference is, Radiohead has a following of dedicated fans, Moodboard, has not.

But what the hell, if you can’t compete with microstock, why not throw everything to the wind and see if something, if anything, will fly. In these complicated times, where the industry is redefining itself, it is certainly not a surprising move. After all, if you cannot compete with the quality of your images, why not compete with the price ? Since no one from the outside can monitor what people are paying, you can bloody hell say what you want. Soon, mark my words, you will have another press release claiming that someone decided to pay $10,000 for an image on Moodboard Unleashed dot com.

It is the kind of event that will remain in history as “what where they thinking?”.

When will this industry finally understand that it is not only the price that has made the microstock successful, but the content. A guy designing a website for a dentist can actually find an image of a toothbrush. If you have the right content, people will come and purchase images, mr Moodboard. No need to beg and ask for charity : ” here, take one of our images and please give what you can so we can have some supper tonight”. It is basic economics.

Regardless, it is one for the books and a very interesting experiment. Even with a wholly owned photo shoot, it will take a while to get the investment back. Why not give these images to 4 of 5 micro/midstock agency, instead of blocking a whole server for this ? Surely, my dear, they cannot believe they will make more income with this ?

Or is it just a simple, basic, low grounding marketing plow to catch the headlines and conversations of every image buyer worldwide. A trap, maybe ? a media coup ? One that Photo news website might easy fall into ?

mmm… more tea my dear ?

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