Contract Change 2021 - Official thread

[Ed Rooney]

 

Kay, if there has been no clarity after 118 pages of opinions and speculation, I don't think you will find it on Page 119.

 

Edited June 20, 2021 by Ed Rooney

[spacecadet]

13 hours ago, Paul J said:

It was pointed out to me that there is a good chance there will be two currency conversions per sale, once if the purchase currency is not is USD, and again if payout is not in USD. So potentially up to 5% of each sale could be taken as part of Alamy's currency conversion fee. 

There isn't and it isn't.

I've checked and Alamy's rate is usually within 2.5- 3% of the spot rate.

In any case, there's no "currency conversion" when Alamy quotes, and is paid, a price in a different currency. Alamy hedges against changes in exchange rates.

13 hours ago, Paul J said:

a fellow 'Vote Leave' Alamy supplier.

And you mention this because.....? Surely no connection with not understanding economic facts? Alamy had to decide its main currency 20 years ago. It chose USD because it expected that to be its main market. I assume this reduces the hedging that it needs to do.

Edited June 20, 2021 by spacecadet

[spacecadet]

8 hours ago, spacecadet said:

21 hours ago, Paul J said:

a fellow 'Vote Leave' Alamy supplier.

And you mention this because.....?

 

7 minutes ago, Paul J said:

Because I am closing my account, as are others. 

Huh? You mentioned voting leave because you're closing your account???????? Quite a non-sequitur!😀

I can cope with the childish Red Arrows, btw whoever it is. Quite a lot of greenies to count down there!

Edited June 20, 2021 by spacecadet

[Colblimp]

On 16/06/2021 at 16:27, Alamy said:

 

We've been clear as to why that decision has been made via the statement Emily put out on the 17th of May regarding this. 

Er, no. No you haven’t.  Saying the 50% commission structure ‘isn’t sustainable’ is not a clear reason.  If anything it’s an insult to the contributors, and is the main reason why I, and many others, don’t trust anything Alamy and its employees say any more.  

[geogphotos]

11 minutes ago, Colblimp said:

Er, no. No you haven’t.  Saying the 50% commission structure ‘isn’t sustainable’ is not a clear reason.  If anything it’s an insult to the contributors, and is the main reason why I, and many others, don’t trust anything Alamy and its employees say any more.  

 

 

Exactly. All we have had is woffle and prevarication. Letting the days go past until they lock down the discussion.

 

What are the reasons for our commission being cut to 40%? In particular having been given the assurance at Xmas that this was not being planned and another assurance that sales are on the increase and could fund developments.  What changed?

 

Without a reason this just seems like greed and legalised theft - an opportunistic grab of contributors' income and nothing else.

 

Before you lock the the thread don't you think that your contributors deserve a clear explanation from one of those Alamy leaders taking responsibility for making the decision?

 

Please stop hiding behind feeble excuses and tell us the truth. 

Edited June 21, 2021 by geogphotos

[Colblimp]

1 minute ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

Exactly. All we have had is woffle and prevarication. Letting the days go past until they lock down the discussion.

 

What are the reasons for our commission being cut to 40%? In particular having been given the assurance at Xmas that this was not being planned and another assurance that sales are on the increase and could fund developments.  What changed?

 

Without a reason this just seems like greed and legalised theft - an opportunistic grab of contributor's income and nothing else.

 

Before you lock the the thread don't you think that your contributors deserve a clear explanation from one of those responsible for making the decision?

 

Please stop hiding behind feeble excuses and tell us the truth. 

This.  All of this. ^^^^^

[Mr Standfast]

9 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

Exactly. All we have had is woffle and prevarication. Letting the days go past until they lock down the discussion.

 

What are the reasons for our commission being cut to 40%? In particular having been given the assurance at Xmas that this was not being planned and another assurance that sales are on the increase and could fund developments.  What changed?

 

Without a reason this just seems like greed and legalised theft - an opportunistic grab of contributors' income and nothing else.

 

Before you lock the the thread don't you think that your contributors deserve a clear explanation from one of those Alamy leaders taking responsibility for making the decision?

 

Please stop hiding behind feeble excuses and tell us the truth. 

Morning Ian, keep asking the question, but corporate culture won't permit a candid answer. 

Stay safe.

[AlbertSnapper]

Put simply.....

 

....it's like it or lump it.

 

 

[ChrisR Photo]

16 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

 

What are the reasons for our commission being cut to 40%? In particular having been given the assurance at Xmas that this was not being planned and another assurance that sales are on the increase and could fund developments.  What changed?

 

Without a reason this just seems like greed and legalised theft - an opportunistic grab of contributors' income and nothing else.

 

Before you lock the the thread don't you think that your contributors deserve a clear explanation from one of those Alamy leaders taking responsibility for making the decision?

 

Please stop hiding behind feeble excuses and tell us the truth. 

 

This exactly!    For over a 118 pages Alamy have evaded an explanation to the commission cut without any answers, and we, as contributors to Alamy's profits deserve an answer

(and not a politician's answer either please!)

[geogphotos]

44 minutes ago, AlbertSnapper said:

Put simply.....

 

....it's like it or lump it.

 

 

 

Most likely, and that tells us everything we need to know about our relationship with Alamy.

[Homy]

But they have answered on the first page. They need our money to invest in and improve their website and marketing resources. Apparently 261,976,344 images aren't enough so they need to reach every human being on the planet with more ads. Maybe they also want to launch a space program so they can reach the aliens and make them to contribute with some extraterrestrial images from the galaxies far far away, to go where no photo agency has gone before...

 

"How can Alamy justify earning more from a sale than the photographer?

 

Our core rate for direct sales continues to be 40% for the vast majority of our contributors. We believe this is fair because we incur significant and rising costs bringing images to market – especially as competition increases. This allows Alamy to invest, as it is doing currently, in an improved website and platform, and in sales and marketing resource. It’s also one of the most generous rates available in a very competitive market."

Edited June 21, 2021 by Homy

[geogphotos]

10 minutes ago, Homy said:

 

 

Our core rate for direct sales continues to be 40% for the vast majority of our contributors. We believe this is fair because we incur significant and rising costs bringing images to market – especially as competition increases. This allows Alamy to invest, as it is doing currently, in an improved website and platform, and in sales and marketing resource. It’s also one of the most generous rates available in a very competitive market."

 

 

So why wasn't this known to Alamy in December 2020?

 

At that time we were told that no commission change was necessary to fund these planned developments because they could be paid for from increased sales.

 

Two options:

 

1) Alamy doesn't know what it is doing so has had to reverse what we were told six months ago

2) Alamy knows full well what it is doing and decided not to tell us about it in advance

[meanderingemu]

On 18/06/2021 at 11:19, imageplotter said:

 

Yes, it probably does. Here's where it gets a bit murky though. I, together with many others (sometimes up to 40 press photographers, freelance, wire agency and the few remaining staffers, plus camera crews) often attend zoo press photo calls, at London Zoo, Whipsnade etc. ZSL want us to take those images (and whilst they also mail out freebies by their own tog to the editors, these are often not as nice and tend to be for online use or smaller publications who rely on freebies), and they keenly want to get coverage. So far so good. If we were to all have these images available for the live news period only (as used to be the case for a brief while with the Tate and their photo calls), far fewer photographers would attend. A few hastily edited pics from the better photo calls get usage on the day after/48hrs (not all of the pressers are visually that interesting), but quite a few more get usage in the weeks and months afterwards. And ZSL are generally quite happy about the extra PR they get. This year, I should think they'll be extra keen on any coverage they get (except for the odd negative headline), given that all zoos struggle during covid and really need to make up for lost revenue.

 

 After the presser, once I've filed, I tend to hang around for a bit (if there are no other news events or photo calls immediately afterwards) and do some add-on shots of other animals that might fit a news theme (hot or cold temperatures, seasons, zoo babies etc) and file a few more. A few times, these have then also been used by newspapers (occasionally with Alamy, more often when pinged out by another news pic agency) because they may just happen to have been visually more appealing, and the paper needed a vibrant 'happy' pic to fill a space somewhere. Again, the zoos tend to be quite happy about this (I often send them a quick mail that I've filed a few more, but not always), it rarely generates negative PR and may translate into ticket sales for them. 

 

My point is - there is a grey area in all this. I for one will be unlikely to still attend all of their photo calls if I had to delete the images after the news period, I suspect it could create friction with wires distributing via Alamy, too, if their images are deleted soon after submission, plus it creates additional work. 

 

 

 

 

 

I agree.  my other worry is by definition plenty of News images would likely fit on the "Will offend someone" category.  

 

 

As for your zoo images, i would still personally upload them, but these would be clearly images where i would keep the automatic "For Editorial use only" notation that comes from Live News, and would put it on any images I Uploaded directly to stock.  I think fact the Zoo invited you in clearly shows this was allowed by them.   

[wilkopix]

3 hours ago, geogphotos said:

What are the reasons for our commission being cut to 40%? In particular having been given the assurance at Xmas that this was not being planned and another assurance that sales are on the increase and could fund developments.  What changed?

 

Without a reason this just seems like greed and legalised theft - an opportunistic grab of contributors' income and nothing else.

 

Before you lock the the thread don't you think that your contributors deserve a clear explanation from one of those Alamy leaders taking responsibility for making the decision?

 

Please stop hiding behind feeble excuses and tell us the truth. 

 

Agreed ... I doubt Alamy will bother to explain further. Hard to tell your contributors that a 10-20% increase in profits - by doing nothing, looks good to the board members and shareholders. Great for share dividends and staff bonuses though.

 

Maybe they should invest a little more in their contributors, they are after all what has made Alamy unique in a competitive market place. This latest contract change and rate cut appears by the number of pages on this forum to have been one step too far for many of us loyal and many long term contributors. The goodwill, trust and warm fuzzy feeling about Alamy has suddenly been lost.

 

I don't know if it was intentional but they are forcing many of us to become non exclusive and supply other agencies to make up the loss in earnings. There are still many good photolibraries out there that offer 50% and certainly a couple of subscription sites that offer 80-100%.  Alamy will still be the best place for general stock .. but for how much longer once photographers start looking at the other options available and buyers start to discover unique material available elsewhere ..... is this really a good business decision by Alamy?

 

 

 

[meanderingemu]

2 hours ago, Homy said:

But they have answered on the first page. They need our money to invest in and improve their website and marketing resources. Apparently 261,976,344 images aren't enough so they need to reach every human being on the planet with more ads. Maybe they also want to launch a space program so they can reach the aliens and make them to contribute with some extraterrestrial images from the galaxies far far away, to go where no photo agency has gone before...

 

"How can Alamy justify earning more from a sale than the photographer?

 

Our core rate for direct sales continues to be 40% for the vast majority of our contributors. We believe this is fair because we incur significant and rising costs bringing images to market – especially as competition increases. This allows Alamy to invest, as it is doing currently, in an improved website and platform, and in sales and marketing resource. It’s also one of the most generous rates available in a very competitive market."

 

 

but where is the explanation where this must be funded by those who are exclusive? The average non-exclusive no distribution seller will be contributing NOTHING to this required cost increase.  

 If this is required, wouldn't it make more sense to charge it on those that were not exclusive, especially those that seem content with up to 85%  commission at MS? 

[John Mitchell]

6 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

As for your zoo images, i would still personally upload them, but these would be clearly images where i would keep the automatic "For Editorial use only" notation that comes from Live News, and would put it on any images I Uploaded directly to stock.  I think fact the Zoo invited you in clearly shows this was allowed by them.   

 

It's perhaps worth noting that a certain really biG stock agency has thousands of zoo animal pics available, many of them RF. Perhaps the photographers all got permission from the zoos to offer their photos as stock, but I kinda doubt it.

 

When I was doing a lot of travel writing in addition to photography, I was often able to get permission to photograph in places where photography was usually verboten. The rules were dropped simply because I was going to write newspaper and magazine articles. Not that I ever made a lot of money. Travel writing isn't exactly a lucrative line of work.

[meanderingemu]

4 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

It's perhaps worth noting that a certain really biG stock agency has thousands of zoo animal pics available, many of them RF. Perhaps the photographers all got permission from the zoos to offer their photos as stock, but I kinda doubt it.

 

When I was doing a lot of travel writing in addition to photography, I was often able to get permission to photograph in places where photography was usually verboten. The rules were dropped simply because I was going to write newspaper and magazine articles. Not that I ever made a lot of money. Travel writing isn't exactly a lucrative line of work.

 

 

it is also worth nothing that on the moderated forum of a Sizeable Stock agency when people get rejections due to possible restrictions from such locations, they are advise to just resubmit removing any reference to zoo and the likes in KWs and caption. also note that most rejections used to be followed by a "try again" e-mail from the agency, inviting them to resubmit. 

[hsessions]

I have followed all 119 pages of this topic, still confused and more confused.  I am putting restrictions on my collection, but am afraid I'll put so many that nothing will sell.

Can anyone who has understood this contract better than I have, help with just a few specific questions I have.

 

1. If I had images at another agency which have never sold; have since been removed and are not available for licensing there, can I mark those as Exclusive to Alamy?

(Anything with Logos, Brands, Trademarks, Statues etc., I know what I need to do.)

2. Opting out of distribution is just to avoid the distributor licesing images (ignoring restrictions one has put on them, distributor does the bad and the client also, and I pay for it), plus, to not offend anyone in that country in case the image is deemed offensive?  And so your opinion/s advice - Opt out?

3. Rationale for Opting out of PU kind of same as above except its the client ignoring license terms/contract, misusing, getting into trouble and I have to pay for it? So opinion/advice Opt Out?

 

I will do all these things also curious how many of you feel that ticking the editorial box is enough protection on RM images, if Alamy has the right to offer the image for commercial use as per the blurb above the license options and fees where it asks the client to contact them about a license for commercial use.  I have added a note in the additional info field:  Image available for Editorial Use ONLY.  I get the feeling that it is pointless, not worth much, and could be ignored.

 

And now I suppose, I see me doing more cut outs of fruits and mounds of peanuts.

Ranking will hit rock bottom, why should one's rank remain up there, Alamy would prefer to present images to buyers that are actually licensable, available through distribution and without all those conditions and restrictions placed on them and those will float up to the top and first pages.  Don't know if I am ready to embrace, Silver, at some point in the future  But,  ...This is the end, hold my breath and count to ten...  Let the sky fall...

 

I understand everyone is busy and have their own ports and things to sort out, but will appreciate if could spare a few minutes to respond to the above.

Thanks

Helen

Edited June 22, 2021 by hsessions

[GeoffK]

Surely with all these restrictions etc bing put in to place, which will cost contribs revenue, why don't a number club together and ask a lawyer..... I would suggest Swan Turton as IIRC Alamy used/maybe still do get their advice/services. Might be a conflict of interest but photographers mulling over and pronouncing on legal issues might be great for popcorn sales but it's not really getting anywhere.

 

 

[Ed Rooney]

. . . and round and around we go.

[Steve F]

13 minutes ago, GeoffK said:

Surely with all these restrictions etc bing put in to place, which will cost contribs revenue, why don't a number club together and ask a lawyer..... I would suggest Swan Turton as IIRC Alamy used/maybe still do get their advice/services. Might be a conflict of interest but photographers mulling over and pronouncing on legal issues might be great for popcorn sales but it's not really getting anywhere.

 

 

 

I used up all my popcorn 50 pages ago.... 🙄

[Russell Watkins]

22 hours ago, geogphotos said:

So why wasn't this known to Alamy in December 2020?

 

At that time we were told that no commission change was necessary to fund these planned developments because they could be paid for from increased sales.

 

Two options:

 

1) Alamy doesn't know what it is doing so has had to reverse what we were told six months ago

2) Alamy knows full well what it is doing and decided not to tell us about it in advance

 

So as I've said all along, cock-up or conspiracy.

 

Either way, it doesn't bode well.

[BobD]

6 hours ago, hsessions said:

I have followed all 119 pages of this topic, still confused and more confused.  I am putting restrictions on my collection, but am afraid I'll put so many that nothing will sell.

Can anyone who has understood this contract better than I have, help with just a few specific questions I have.

 

1. If I had images at another agency which have never sold; have since been removed and are not available for licensing there, can I mark those as Exclusive to Alamy?

(Anything with Logos, Brands, Trademarks, Statues etc., I know what I need to do.)

 

 

I understand everyone is busy and have their own ports and things to sort out, but will appreciate if could spare a few minutes to respond to the above.

Thanks

Helen

 

Why would you want to make anything exclusive to Alamy. There would be no advantage to doing so.

[Fungijus]

26 minutes ago, BobD said:

 

Why would you want to make anything exclusive to Alamy. There would be no advantage to doing so.

But what if your images are exclusive? Wouldn’t the advantage be that Alamy will chase infringements on behalf of the photographer?

[meanderingemu]

37 minutes ago, Fungijus said:

But what if your images are exclusive? Wouldn’t the advantage be that Alamy will chase infringements on behalf of the photographer?

 

we have no proof that they will.  to date we have had zero report of infringement award from anyone nor Alamy, and the process must have been going on for a while since this is own the Identified the need to alter the commission schedule structure as per the director.  the only thing that seems to happen are late licences, without even any late fees and certainly no penalty for steeling copyright property.