Flickr teams with Getty Images on licensing deal
The new partnership would allow users of Yahoo's photo sharing service to make their images available for licensing to clients of Getty's digital image service.
No timetable for the service's launch has yet been announced, however the images culled from Flickr would reside in a specially branded collection. Getty will invite select users to participate, and will select imagery based on the needs of its clients.
The details of exactly how Getty would compensate Flickr users have yet to be disclosed. Traditionally, Getty has shared 30-40 percent of the revenues of imagery sold with exclusive rights, and 20 percent of that sold with non-exclusive rights, with its contributors.
Work is underway for Getty to build tools which will allow it to contact Flickr members, and to transfer the photo site's images from Flickr to Gettyimages.com. Both companies expect to make thousands of photos available for download. Once in the collection, Getty will manage the rights for those photos.
The deal is thought to be the first of its kind to connect a photo enthusiast site with a professional photography service. It also helps Yahoo to further distinguish Flickr from its competitors.
According to Web site analytics firm Compete, Flickr is now the #1 photography site on the Web with 28.5 million unique visitors per month, having passed Photobucket earlier this year, which attracts about 25 million visitors.
Getty sees the deal as helping to strengthen its local imagery repertoire, as well as giving its customers a broader range of photography styles to choose from. Flickr says the deal is a validation of sorts to the site's strength.
"This partnership is testimony to the Flickr community of photographers who have influenced the aesthetics of photography with authentic, creative and cutting-edge images which will now be available to Getty Images' customers around the world," Flickr general manager Kakul Srivastava said in a statement.
4:46 pm EDT July 9, 2007 - A Getty Images representative confirmed with BetaNews this afternoon that participants in this program will be asked to sign a Getty Images contributor contract, which was described as "substantially similar to our existing contributor contracts."
Standard royalty rates may apply for the distribution of these shared images, depending on whether royalties also apply to the end user. Under the royalty-free tier, users pay a one-time fee of between $200 and $500, the spokesperson told us, and the photographer may receive a 20% cut. For rights-managed images, the price is approximately $500, and royalties to the photographer range from 30% to 40% depending upon the territory in which the licensed images are to be used.