Explaining Why 'If We Charge, People Will Pay' Thinking Is Misguided
from the go-King-go dept
Rose M. Welch points us to a wonderful writeup by King Kaufman at Salon (whose sports column I miss -- but the value of his work about the future of journalism more than makes up for it), concerning the news that Time Magazine used a stock photo it bought from iStockPhoto for a recent cover story. The photographer whose photograph was used was thrilled (as were some of the other photographers). However, there was also a group of photographers who went on to berate him (the photographer) for getting screwed over by a "multi-billion dollar company." Except, of course, they've missed the point. The photograph had already been taken (it didn't take any more work by the photographer to do this) and he was perfectly happy to get money he wouldn't have received otherwise -- even if it was a small amount. From there, Kaufman goes into beautiful beat down mode, and explains how the complaining photographers are flat-out wrong... while also comparing the situation to journalists who say the answer is to just put up a paywall and magically people will pay. It's so good, that I'm quoting a large portion of it, but go read the whole thing as well (and then follow that blog):Saying that if photographers all refused to do stock photography they'd all get paid more is like saying that if restaurants all refused to give customers napkins without charging they'd all make a bundle on napkin sales. It's like saying that if local bands refused to play for drinks at dive bars, they'd all make good money playing music.Indeed. What Kaufman describes is the same sort of economic illiteracy that we run into in conversations all the time. People feel that because they don't like the way things work, they need to either blame those who are happy with the way things work or to blame those of us who are simply explaining the economics of supply and demand to them. It's a blame the messenger sort of thing. If I could create a world where photographers and journalists could magically make tons of money, I would. That would be great. But, that's not the world we live in, and pretending it is (or pretending you can simply start charging high amounts and people will keep paying) doesn't help matters. Instead, figuring out ways to understand the economics at play, and then looking for ways to take advantage of those basic economics, seems to make the most sense. This is not about what "should" happen or what people would "like" to happen. It's about what is happening, and learning to take advantage of it.
It's also like saying that if news organizations stopped giving away content on the Web, people would pay for news content online. It's absurd.
The posters in that forum who are making that argument are failing, or refusing, to understand basic economics, if not human nature. All photographers are not going to refuse to do stock photography. The ones who do refuse will simply be opening up the market for those willing to sell their pictures cheaply, either because they're not in it for the money or because they can make a profit on volume.
And those arguing that Time should have paid more for this stock photo because it sometimes pays more for other photos, or because it has a lot of money, are forgetting a little thing called supply and demand.
We should note, though, that because Time prints so many copies, it is likely it had to pay iStockphoto for an unlimited-run license, and that its cost was more like $125 than $30. Still nowhere near thousands, and we should also note that Lam, the photographer, was thrilled with his Time cover at a price of $30, and plenty of his colleagues were thrilled for him.
The same pricing dynamic is in play in journalism. The price is not set by how much time, effort, talent or experience went into making the product, and it's not set by how much money the customer has. It's set by supply and demand. The supply of stock photography is very large. The supply of general news content is huge.
If Time hadn't found Lam's stock photo of coins in a jar for $30, or $125, it would have found a similar photo for a similar price. If news consumers can't get their news online for free from their favorite news organization, they'll find it for free somewhere else.
What happened with Lam's photo is not a failure of the system, not a case of photographers eating their own and not a matter of big, rich Time magazine taking advantage of the little guy. I doubt those photographers would expect Time, because it has such a big budget, to pay $3 for a postage stamp or $20 a pound for the office coffee.
What happened with Lam's photo is simply the way the industry works. Time paid what it paid for that image because that's about what it was worth.
When the barrier to entry is low, the supply of goods is large and the alternatives available to the buyer many, the price is going to be low. Wishing it were otherwise, as the photographers are doing in that online forum and as opponents of free content do in Future of Journalism nerdland, will not make it otherwise.
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Filed Under: business, demand, economics, journalism, king kaufman, magazine covers, paywalls, photographs, supply
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When everything is "FREE!" is it unlikely that anyone will make any more, let alone a ton.
We have met the enemy, it is us.
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No, we have met the enemy, and it is you.
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When everything is free, there is no more corner store. There is no more walmart, there is no nothing. Heck, good luck finding a place to live, because you have to build it yourself out of whatever you can find, because there are no building centers, no 2 x 4 wood, no concrete, because everything is free and nobody is going to do the hard work so you can live for free.
In simpler media terms, there are certain jobs in media that are hard work: Showing up to the remote airplane crash in the middle of winter, filming the war(s) in africa, and so on. Working editing these stories and fact checking is another boring an horrible job. I could go on, but safe to say that there are plenty of job that, if nobody was paying, most people would never do. Safe to say that when everything is free, nobody will do those jobs. So what we get is only what is comfortable and easy to report, not what is actually "work".
"FREE!" is never free, you just don't see the cost directly. If you think something is free, look more closely, you are paying for it somehow.
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Infinite Supply ⇒ $0 marginal cost ⇒ $0 per unit price (eventually)
Finite Supply ⇒ non-zero marginal cost ⇒ non-zero unit price
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Cover of Time magazine, where do I sign up? Hell, I'd pay them $30 for the publicity.
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EXACTLY. you're getting more from time than time is getting from you.
the biggest disruption of the internet is the commoditization of content, and it hit photography years ago. since the tech does so much now that most college kids with a DSLR can shoot just as well as a 20 year veteran, the only remaining factor of "who wins" is rarity of subject matter. and since the internet connects EVERYONE, and there are hundreds or thousands of other pictures JUST LIKE THIS ONE, it's the luck of the draw when some big company decides to spend a ton of money putting your content in front of millions of eyeballs.
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At some point, something happens, and there will be nobody to cover it, then you remember why things get paid for.
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Huh? The whole point is that the quality of amateur efforts now overlaps with the quality of pro efforts. So quality doesn't suffer. Moreover, we have increased coverage b/c of the amateurs far outnumbering the pros.
Besides, quality isn't everything. These days you're better off with a cameraphone vid from an amateur than an "I'm on my way" from a pro.
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If you are not getting paid to work, you work when you feel like it. So the vast majority of images will be shot on nice sunny days, in nice places. It's cold? Raining? Snow and Ice? The amateurs stay home and play Wii. The professionals getting paid to work show up and do the work.
It's all in how you look at it.
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I know, because I have done photography as a hobby myself.
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Amateur != professional
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I own a farm, and start growing corn, because it's worth good money. 50 other people figure that out, and grow their own corn. 1000 people join in. Then 1 million. Suddenly, corn is worthless.
At some point, no one grows corn because it's worthless. Then I start growing corn again...and charge whatever I want, because I have a monopoly on the product.
And then 50 other people figure out there's good money in corn...
Really, did you even think this through?
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(I detect snobbery here.)
Amateurs can now afford to work with equipment that is no worse than what the professionals use. For simple images like the jar of coins the amateur image will be indistinguishable from the professional one. If there is an economic need for so called "professional" quality images then there will be a market for them.
Remember the cardinal point of economics - something is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it - regardless of the effort/skill/talent/inspiration/expense that went into it making it. That is the definition of its value.
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In many, many cases this is likely true. However, some years ago I had the good fortune of having a professional photographer as a client...an idividual whose work was consistently recognized as the best of the best.
I think it fair to say that if he had taken a photo of a mere jar of coins it would have, without a doubt, stuck out and distinguished itself from all others. The point being made is that merely having tools to take photographs does not necessarily put one in the same league as one who knows how to squeeze every ounce of quality possible from even the most mundane of subjects.
I have not the slightest doubt that he could have used a pinhole camera made from an oatmeal container and produced a photo that would easily blow away anything that most digital SLR amateurs (sp) could produce from all their pricey equipment.
Sadly, my friend and former client passed away about two years ago from cancer. With his passing the world of photography lost a true genius.
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and if the picture bank has a good prioritization algo (i.e. it stops displaying images that the target audience keeps passing on) then it substantially cuts down on the sorting time. you end up with a high probability of good content, and you're selling it for low rates.
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Economics
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Supply and Demand
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With the advent of digital cameras and their widespread popularity among photographer wannabes came various microstock sites where the prices for use were...well...cheap.
As the microstock sites have gained popularity with stock photo users many have been acquired and folded into to large stock photo companies. For example, Jupiter Media and all of its associated companies were recently acquired by Getty. Of course, there are still many microstock companies around that remain independent, though I suspect many of them hope for a day in the future where the large stock companies show interest in acquiring them as well.
Interestingly, I have not as yet seen any evidence that the large stock companies are using these acquisitions as a way to limit the stock photo market and thereby maintain prices at an artificially high level. Rather, it appears to me that they are being integrated in a manner where the photo offerings range from pricey to cheap. The photos of well-known photographers tend to command a premium price, whereas those of the weekend photographer who happens to take a decent photo command significantly less.
An aspect of the stock photo market that distinguishes it from the entertainment market is that it is primarily utilitarian, i.e., the end user typically utilizes stock photos in a business context.
BTW, for those who may need to avail themselves of stock photos but are not inclined to pay for even cheap stock (importantly, cheap does not in any way suggest inferior quality), they can always mosey over to www.sxc.hu and download stock for free. (Disclaimer: I have a few photos hosted at sxc that can be used for any purpose whatsoever, as opposed to the limited uses specified in the site's license terms for photo usage. I used to have many more there, but took them down when many of the newcomers to the site started obssessing about copyright and not the sheer fun of sharing photos.)
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Payin' for the photograph
On the other hand, if the photog has a photo of a jar of coins lying around, and the mag says, "Hey, that's a great photo of a jar of coins. Here's 30 bucks!" The photog just made his thirty bucks with no new work.
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spoken, no doubt, from the comfort of your 9 to 5, salaried lifestyle...
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Stock Photographs Are Trash.
The kind of writer who uses a picture of a jar of pennies to illustrate an article about economics is likely to be a mentally lazy writer, who does not trouble to teach himself the relevant details, such as the actual mechanics of money transfers and stuff like that. Economics is not about people counting out pennies. A writer like that is always going to be repeating the conventional wisdom, instead of thinking for himself. This is no doubt true of Time Magazine as a whole.
A classic example of the abuse of stock photographs is the story of The Everywhere Girl, otherwise known as Jennifer Chandra (Jennifer Anderson). She was a photographer's model, and did a photo shoot for a fixed fee, some years ago. The photographer subsequently sold her image to an extraordinary number of advertisers, in every conceivable line of business. Enterprising journalists eventually tracked down who was using The Everywhere Girl pictures, and held the companies and organizations up to public ridicule. Even Harvard University was caught in the trap. All these companies and organizations revealed about themselves was that they had no idea who they were, or what they stood for, and that they had no good reason for being in business. The computer companies which used the pictures revealed that their computers differed from those of discount suppliers only in price.
http://www.theeverywheregirl.com/2006/07/05/the-infamous-photo-shoot/
Incidentally, I read Trains Magazine. They have some of the finest landscape photography which is published nowadays. Their reporters are all photographers as well, and, as you would expect for a specialist publication, railroad experts. Often, they work, by invitation, in places not open to the general public, such as railroad yards and locomotive cabs, and one of their essential qualifications is the ability to keep safe around heavy equipment. In that line of work, it really helps to be a former railroader.
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