NEW PARADIGM SHIFTS IN STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY - PART II (Continued)

COMPARING FOUR ADDITIONAL ONLINE MARKETPLACES (#4 of 4)
    Background: Alamy currently has about 3 million images online from 4600 photographers and 296 agencies. By comparison, all of the four marketplaces we are comparing in this article currently have less than 100,000 images online. All five online marketplaces (Alamy included) do not require an exclusive agreement, and we've noticed many image suppliers are represented by two or more of these marketplaces (and often with the same images). We'll now attempt to offer some overall comparisons and unique features that these four online marketplaces offer. NOTE: Your editor has placed images with all four online marketplaces, and has interviewed contributors at each marketplace to help with this comparison.
THE STOCK SOLUTION

Owned by Royce Bair
Located in Salt Lake City, Utah
Domain first registered: January 9, 1996.

NOTE: Your editor owns this agency. Even though he has tried to remain objective and unbiased in this article, you should be aware of this connection.

The Stock Solution (TSSphoto.com) has about 71,000 images online from over 300 contributors (shared or combined contributors, with MyLoupe.com). Contributor application and Agreement info:
http://www.tssphoto.com/join.html

Because TSSphoto.com is part of the My Loupe network (see My Loupe, marketplace #3), its site shares most of the features that are on MyLoupe.com, i.e. flexible pricing modifiers for photographers (6 levels for R-F and 8 levels for R-M) and sharable lightboxes for clients.

Any image submitted to the TSSphoto.com site, will also appear on the MyLoupe.com site, giving the photographer two portals and chances to make a sale. Contributors receive 60% of each sale (no matter which site the image is sold from). TSS photographers are paid monthly for royalties totaling $200 or more, and paid quarterly when royalties are less than $200. NOTE: Photographers must choose which online marketplace they wish to join first: Once you join TSSphoto, you cannot join MyLoupe, and vise versa.

Unique features: What sets The Stock Solution apart is that it brings over 25 years of agency contacts and buyer negotiating experience to its online marketplace. Here's a demonstration of what that means to photographers:
http://www.tssphoto.com/photovalue/
Another feature The Stock Solution plans to add this Fall is a Copyright Tracking service for monitoring unauthorized uses of their photographer's rights managed images. TSS used to use a similar service (BayTSP) a few years ago, and found it very effective, but that company no longer tracks images. This new Copyright Tracking service, employs an image recognition technology which converts each of the photographer's thumbnail images into a digital fingerprint, capturing the unique features of that image. This digital fingerprint is then used to compare the photographer's image with images that are currently on the Web. Smart crawlers then scan commercial Web sites, looking for matching images appearing on those Web sites. The results found by the crawlers are compared with the fingerprint database of the photographer's images.

TSS' experience has shown that unauthorized use and re-use of rights managed images is quite rampant, especially in the advertising industry. Art directors and photo buyers play "musical chairs" so often in this industry that advertising agencies and their clients rarely have accurate records as to what limited rights they have purchased. Most of the infringements TSS has discovered in the past are unintentional. TSS' negotiating skills have been successful in collecting many additional use fees from unintentional infringers. Those infringers who are not cooperative are subject to the full remedies provided by copyright registration.
Features we wish The Stock Solution had: Both TSSphoto.com and MyLoupe.com require contributors to make a high-resolution and a medium-resolution image for their uploads. While this greatly improves server efficiency, it adds another step to the contributor's work flow. Both TSSphoto.com and MyLoupe.com currently have a maximum resolution limit of 3900 pixels (about 28MB - 44MB, depending on the image's aspect ratio). While this size probably handles 90% of most buyer needs, we wish they had a "super" or "extra large" size option as well (although buyers can request a larger file via email). This is a limitation that TSSphoto.com and MyLoupe.com plan to address in the near future.

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(Reprinted by permission from the InkjetART.com "Inkjet NEWS & Tips" newsletter, July 5, 2005)