More news from the stock photography world this morning, after leader in the field iStock announced it would be expanding its services to include stock logo sales.
Shutterstock has just announced its acquisition of BigStockPhoto, a credit-based stock photo agency headquartered in Davis, California.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Jon Oringer, founder and CEO of Shutterstock, said the expansion into the credit-based market will enable the company to “better satisfy the diverse payment preferences of stock photo buyers worldwide”. BigStockPhoto, founded in 2004, will remain a separate entity and Shutterstock (which operates based on subscriptions) plans to grow the company’s global presence by investing in marketing, infrastructure and user experience.
BigStockPhoto says it boasts a library of 3.7 million royalty-free photos and vectors in total, as well as a “vibrant community of image buyers and submitters” from across the globe.
And thus the consolidation of the online stock photography sector continues.
Who will be next?
I don’t think this was a great deal. Many of the BigStockPhoto members have ShutterStock accounts so the number of photos will not increase considerably.
Also the quality on Big Stock is not that great.
Cheers!
Yeah, this is big news.
@Andy Gongea – They haven’t mentioned anything about merging their databases, if anything quite the opposite. The only information we have so far indicates that they will continue to be two separate entities entirely with the added bonus of a much larger marketing budget for Bigstock. I see this as a good development for photographers.
One of the biggest reasons why BigStockPhoto stood out from the competition was their unique licensing terms which means buyers don’t need to pay huge extended license fees to use stock photos in redistributable products, such as software downloads, website templates, etc. With this takeover, if they change the terms, they’ll end up losing a lot of their loyal buyers.
LEON – I think that is the whole reason they took over BigStock if I understood the release, is to offer different types of licensing and user experiences. That is the whole point of acquisition – it is diversification, not consolidation as the post heading might suggest. My guess is if they didn’t that BigStock might just wane off a bit. Not the busiest agency in the market right now.
@Leon and Danie
I don’t think they would spend the cash to take over Bigstock simply for their licensing terms. Shutterstock offers extended licenses and if it is price they wanted to compete on, they could just change their pricing. If another company offered a license they did not, there is nothing stopping them from offering that license. You don’t need to buy an agency to adopt a licensing structure.