Stock Photography & The Blockchain Revolution
[Blockchain is lining up for a shot at the stock photography market]
The War On Stock Photography Has Begun
Being a stock photographer by day and a cryptocurrency enthusiast by night, i only get excited when both of these two terms cross paths in the same sentence. The combination of these two words is the explosive solution needed by an industry, in dire need of disruption.
[— Countdown Till Disruption —]
What Is Wrong With The World Of Stock Photography?
As an insider, i only know too well about the erroneous world of stock photography. Powered mainly by greed inside the agencies, coupled with its owners and their corporate oversights. Stock photo agencies over time have eroded the fair revenue share models, taking more slices of the pie from the people doing the hard work while bearing the brunt of costs — The content creators.
[URRHH! neeeeed more moneyyy — leettts cut contributor commissions….….. again — We’ll announce it in a “Good News” post on Bitcointalk.org with the words “Bring More Customers” and “Growth” -ROLF!-]
Figuratively Speaking
It’s industry standard for the agencies to take 65–80 percent of revenue from the producers of the content. Does this sound fair???
To make matters worse, agencies are creating content pricing wars and introducing unsustainable pricing structures, where images are sold for literal cents on the dollar with cheap subscription models, leaving the photographer without the option of opting-out, unless they remove their content from the website.
[-ss agents stealing from the poor to give to the rich-]
A Basic Look At The Role Of A Stock Photographer
Stock photography may be a fun job (apart from keywording :P), but it does have its costs, the overheads involved in producing stock images can add up over time, these include:
Equipment: cameras, lenses, lighting, props
Hourly rates for models, makeup/hair/fashion stylist
Travel and fuel
Production costs (if outsourced)
And then comes the workload
Planning
Shooting
Selections
Editing
Keywording / Describing
Uploading / Categorising
After all these burdens on time and financial resources, the stock photographer still only walks away with a 30% share of sales revenue. The agency however is cheering with a 70% split just for advertising and selling the content.
[Coroners results Into how stock photography died is yet to be determined]
Content creation has become a bit of a joke in the stock world of late, many professional are leaving in droves and the content flowing through is predominantly made up by amateurs with cell phone and instagram filters…..
[ #InstaSpamma #KeywordShiteStar #NotDoingitforthecashYO ]
My Experience In The Land Of Stock Photography
I’ve been in the stock photo world since 2006 and i’ve seen it all and done it all:
- Gone exclusive with Macrostock only to live off my mango tree for 2 months
- Exited microstock multiple times only to come begging back begrudgingly to pay bills
- Paid photo editors in Pakistan to help increase photo production, only to garner a collection of Simpsons esque models
- Photographed for years with broken equipment and $30 hallogen lights in the heat of Queensland summers
- Joined countless new stock site offering a fair 50/50 commission only for them to disappear a month later
I’ve built a stock photography portfolio of 14,000 images (8,000 RF | 6,000 RM), yet monthly earnings from my fine art trounce my nearly nonexistent stock photography income.
[days before subscription stolen torrents]
Many Stock Photo Startups Have Tried & Failed — What Makes Blockchain Stock Different?
In my time of working in stock photography, i’ve seen countless stock photo startups, open up and close doors just as quickly as the last, why is this the case? and why wouldn't a blockchain based stock website be any different?
Its no lie that the stock photography industry is a hard nut to crack.
The best analogy would be the chicken and the egg
-- need quality content for sales
-- need sales for quality content
How will Blockchain crack this conundrum?
The main reasoning behind stock startup failure (IMO) is the lack of funding. Taking on the stock giants (who spend $M’s per year on adverting) with a shoe string budget, is like trying to light a match off your stubble, sure looks good in the movies, but that shit ain’t gonna spark. A solid budget in adverting revenue is a must to up-start the contributor/customer wheel.
[-John Doe hit the streets after his Adwords credits expired-]
And here comes the funding — ICOs
ICO’s is a foreign word to most, but it is a game changer in the stock photography market, here is why.
ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering, its where a crowdsale takes place for contributors to exchange fiat/crypto for project specific tokens (almost like a crypto based IPO — without the classification of a security). Tokens minted during ICO are often utilised inside the platform (utility token). Its not uncommon for the funds generated from an ICO to reach into the $Millions USD with some of the larger projects whacking well above $200M USD.
[https://www.coinist.io/biggest-icos-chart/]
Even 5% of this kind of funding would be enough advertising revenue to give the existing stock photo websites some serious grief.
Another amazing quality of the ICO world, is in its ability to generate brand awareness. Having tens-of-thousands of loyal financial backers spreading the word of your project through social media, word of mouth and blog posts, during and after the ICO is a sure fire way to garnish adoption. Word of mouth + Solid Project Funding = Stock Photography Disruption.
[Blockchain + Stock Phtography — A Disruptive Idea]
The Blockchain Solution
Blockchain can provide more than just funding solutions, another core function of blockchain is its decentralised nature— taking the power back from a centralised structure and handing it to the crowd.
A lot of blockchain project offer what they call DAO structures (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation). Typically in a DAO structure, the community get a say into metrics of business direction. Taking regular votes and deciding roadmaps / pricing / etc etc. DAO sturctures in stock photography are what is needed to fix the corporate greed with a fair economic model for all parties involved.
Introducing the Stock Photo DISRUPTORS
[1. Photochain.io
Photochain gives clear advantages over conventional photo stocks to both kinds of users: contributors and customers. Contributors at Photochain benefit from an extremely low fee — only 5% of the selling price. This opportunity to keep 95% of the final sale price allows contributors to offer their work cheaper, and consequently the market becomes more affordable for customers. This type of fair market not only benefits the users, but should benefit the photography industry as a whole, as the possibility of increased income incentivizes contributors to perform better.
These profound market changes are only made possible by using blockchain technology, Smart Contracts, machine learning and Photochain’s own user community. Most of the processes become automated and decentralized, significantly reducing costs of platform governance. It’s unavoidable that more and more stock photography contributors and customers will prefer to use Photochain.
The development of the Photochain platform is an ambitious and organically growing process. Our main aims for the project come under three significant prongs:
• P2P Marketplace
It is very important to us that only the artist themselves can determine the value of their work and that they are given the opportunity to offer their work to lots of potential buyers. Our platform provides this opportunity which is realised using synergies from Blockchain technology and machine learning.
• Crypto Economy
The platform Photochain appeals to a broad audience that currently still aren’t adopters of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies. The relatable use case of “Photochain” will appeal to this audience. The easy-to-use GUI and trading processes facilitate the onboarding process and supports the Crypto Economy to become mainstream.
• Photochain Digital Copyright Chain: DCC
Over the course of the project, more and more artists will be able to strengthen their copyright using the Photochain platform, since their works will be linked to their name. This link is manifested as a transaction in the Ethereum blockchain and is therefore visible to all users at all times. This means that the artist’s ownership of the image can be accounted for. The database with all manifested links has been constructed in a decentralised way. We call this database a DCC.
Website: https://photochain.io/
Whitepaper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C4UPA9-9o2cOLJOEYMIVwN_Fi3Ebtn2YcRua58hQ7_0/edit
Medium: https://medium.com/photochain
Twitter: https://twitter.com/photochain_io
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Photochain-141364963181927
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/photochain.io/
Telegram: https://t.me/photochain_io
2. Selfllery.com
SELFLLERY is a multifunctional social platform that allows you to receive rewards in cryptocurrency for social activities related to publication and distribution of visual content. The product concept and its first versions were designed in early 2016. The SELFLLERY reward system uses ERC20 tokens built on Ethereum blockchain technology.
SELFLLERY enables people to make their visual content truly rewarding. The purpose of SELFLLERY is to create an ecosystem that:
- Enables users to monetize their photos, videos and live streams in a gamified way;
- Supports charitable organizations and makes donations easy for users;
- Provides companies with easy-to-use and effective promotion tools that involve user photos;
- Expands the market of photo and video content for companies and news services, with a convenient search functionality;
- Integrates modern technologies and capabilities of blockchain into the digital photography market, increasing the transparency and security of its transactions.
Website: https://selfllery.com/
Token Sale Website: https://tge.selfllery.com/
Whitepaper: https://selfllery.com/wp/selfllery_whitepaper_en.pdf
Medium: https://medium.com/@SELFLLERY
Twitter: https://twitter.com/selfllery
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Selfllery
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/selfllery/
Telegram: https://t.me/selfllery_en
[https://www.creativechain.org/]
3. Creativechain.org
Creativechain is a decentralized platform for the registration and distribution of content that certifies the authorship and license of any work or creation making them indelible.A tool for the empowerment of artists and all kinds of creative people who produce, share and distribute digital content.
The platform applies the power of attorney of the revolutionary Blockchain technology in the process of registering content to create incorruptible time stamps that certify the intellectual property of any digital work. Creativechain incorporates all the advantages derived from the innovation of crypto coins. In this way, without the need to use bank accounts, purchases, micropayments or donations can be made to the authors of the registered contents.
For the platform, creative chains are the ability of art and culture to interweave any kind of intellectual creation. When it is decided to use a copyleft licensed image to complete a new work of art, an invisible link is created that unites these two works forever. In that sense, the platform has been designed to strengthen the relationships that are generated in the processes of collective creation, therefore, any payment or donation can be chained to reward with a percentage to all the authors that are aligned in a creative chain.When someone makes a payment to a work, a percentage is distributed to the entire chain of works that follow. In this way the payment or donation is extended in an “automagic” way to all the derivative works that have participated giving away part of its content.
If the innovative blockchain technology is used in Bitcoin to certify monetary transactions, in Creativechain it is used to certify content registrations (distribution licenses, smart contracts, metadata or files). This technological adaptation makes it possible for the first time in history to create a content distribution system that is decentralized, public, transparent, traceable, incorruptible and free code.
Creativechain is a bet for the public benefit of free culture and common creation as a collaborative method of growing and guaranteeing the right to culture.
Website: https://www.creativechain.org/project/
Whitepaper: https://www.creativechain.org/whitepaper/
Medium: https://medium.com/@Creative_Chain
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creative_Chain
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thecreativechain
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/creative_chain/
Telegram: https://telegram.me/creativechain
[4. Kodakcoin.com
KODAKOne is a revolutionary new image rights management and protection platform secured in the blockchain that seamlessly registers, manages and monetizes creative assets for the photographic community.
Registering your images using with the blockchain gives you immutable proof of ownership and enables you to take advantage of all the services on the KODAKOne platform.
Efficient
KODAKOne artificial intelligence technology integrates and streamlines the tasks of photo management, protection and distribution, enabling photographers to benefit from new income streams and receive payments faster.
Image Economy
KODAKOne will underpin the assured buying and selling of rights-cleared and protected digital assets, allowing KODAKCoin will become the currency of choice for the image economy.
Creative Community
Our mission is to create a sustainable, token-based community of the world‘s photographic supply chain, from photographers of all levels to rightsholders and buyers of imagery and image-related IP.
Transparent
Designed to restore trust and transparency to its members, KODAKOne will deliver blockchain-enabled copyright registration combined with a smart, high-efficiency trustless transaction platform. Every image transaction and license will be immutably stored in KODAKOne’s decentralized registry.
Website: https://kodakcoin.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KodakOne
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kodakoneblockchain/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kodak.one/
In Conclusion
Although many are yet to see it, blockchain will shakeup every single industry imaginable. Funded by the people, controlled by the people, for the betterment of the world and all its creatures. The change we have all been waiting for is in its infancy but its finally here.
-CryotoBlockBits Signing Out-
As always use this information as a guidepost for further research. Never take anyone’s advice on investments (not even financial advisers). Delve into the project via their social media profiles, search the project on bitcointalk.org, duckduckgo.com and reddit.com and only put money in that you can afford to lose. Cryptocurrency is risky — Fiat is a dead man walking.