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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

You can't innovate your way out of basic economics. The value of a photograph has continued to decline year after year to the point where it is now ~$0. The licensing revenue pie is getting smaller and smaller, and so companies in the space have been shrinking and consolidating to adapt to it. That's all there is to it.

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I'd argue that the value of a photograph is not $0. The problem is rather that its actual value is lower than the $200 that Getty wants for a 3MP picture of a hamburger.

I've been in projects where we cleared the rights for every picture, and it's always the same: either we blow the budget on two pictures with strong usage restrictions or we replace them all with CC alternatives.

Perhaps photographs need their Steam moment.

TLDR; Just use http://www.unsplash.com for free professional photos.

100% agree. Years ago I signed up for Getty images (royality based) back when they were competing with Fotolia (royalty free) before they were bought by Adobe, and actually clicked through the shopping cart to see how much it would be to license a picture of some nice autumn leaves for a billboard or a calendar. It was an insane amount in the hundreds of dollars, and it was time limited, and only for a limited run (if you used them for example, a calendar), the usage rights were insane. And if you wanted the full resolution it was something like $1,000+ dollars. Our minds were boggled. We honestly legitamately thought Getty images was some kind of money laundering operation. It was cheaper to hire a photographer to get the pictures you want, rather than license them from Getty.

Yes they have some nice rare photographs of political events (wars, earthquake response, important cultural news photos) but they are insane for thinking their entire catalog is deserving of royalties and time/run limitations. The only thing Getty did was convince me that copyright needs to be heavily reformed. (The photographer isn't paying royalties to all the people who made the objects in the photo, yet they're asking for royalities just for taking the photo)

Unsplash is part of Getty Images.

From 2021: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26634113)

> It was cheaper to hire a photographer to get the pictures you want, rather than license them from Getty.

And how much time would that take? People who are using these services need the photo NOW, and paying a few hundred dollars for licensing is perfectly acceptable for companies when the alternative is missing a publishing deadline or accidentally infringing on someone's copyright.

If you plan to hire a photographer arguably you would factor in that time it would take to get the assets delivered and there wouldn’t be this implication that you need the photo NOW. Savings with planning.

This is called "panorama rights" and is actually how it works in some countries.

In e.g. Italy, one is not allowed to take photos of (new?) buildings without the architect's consent, as far as I'm aware.

Insert reference to the most infamous “Eiffel tower at night” situation

Do you believe if their prices were half, they would sell twice as many?

Shutterstock doesn’t sell digital assets, they sell the license to use assets. The value of a stock photograph for marketing has decreased YoY, but the value of the license to use that photograph has only gone up. The consolidation is a trick they play on shareholders to convince them they are gaining value through assets, even though the value of assets is $0.

That is why a good portion of their earnings calls are about miscellaneous vague initiatives defined as an acronym and how much they saved on operating capital through acquisitions and layoffs.

The only way to increase the value of a license is with exclusivity. In which case the only remaining innovation is to direct the value back to the contributor. Which in turn would shrink the company.

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