A good number of companies came racing to the aid of photographers in the wale of the Digital Railroad trainwreck. Like purveyors of private ambulance services, many touted the line “let us help save you”. One company that has surfaced is LicenseStream. The company seems to be in a beta roll out, and offers a unique license management system that includes an Adobe partnership and incorporates the PLUS license packs.
Photographer, Plus Tech Guru, and Controlled Vocabulary CEO David Riecks has done a great initial write-up that he’s posted to the Stock Artists Alliance newsgroup.
Photographer Lori Carey also has done a really nice write-up on her weblog about her experience publishing content on LicenseStream. I followed one link on an image at her website, through to LicenseStream, acting just they way a regular image buyer would naturally operate. I proceeded to attempt to license the image for home page use on a small regional corporate web site, with non-exclusive use. I found the pricing calculator clunky compared to those featured on many other agency sites and web portals. The resulting use fee was simply absurd.
SEE the exact output from the LicenseStream pricing guide:
Parameters:
Usage Internal Company Use | Website | Web Page (All Web Page Types) | All Electronic Distribution Formats Placement Single Placement on Home Page Size Up To 300 x 600 Pixels Image | Any Size Screen Version Single Version Print Run Any Quantity Duration Up To 5 Years Region(s) North America | One Metropolitan Area (Adjoining Cities) Industry(ies) Any Industries Language(s) English Exclusivity Non-Exclusive
The Non-Exclusive license will start on 11/1/2008 and run for Up To 5 Years in the Any Industries industry in the North America | One Metropolitan Area (Adjoining Cities) region(s).
Suggested Usage Fee:
$ 10000.00
Yeah, that’ll turn buyers on. (NOT!)
I should mention, I did sign up for an account with LicenseStream in the wake of the DRR fiasco, but I have yet to upload any images.
Hi Gary, I think you’ve certainly proved my point that I think the ability to at least see how the pricing is set and ideally have some level of control over it (if not completely control) is necessary. While I had played with several different scenarios, I didn’t manage to stumble on any price quotes that were quite as extreme as the one you found. Wow, that is really bad! That’s even worse than pricing it too low.
The results you received will now make me change the licensing model to “Contact Me” so I have complete control over the pricing. Unfortunately that also eliminates the automation that is the reason for trying this product in the first place.
I received a great personal response from ImageSpan about my post and am optimistic that they are listening to our feedback and recognize the changes needed to make LicenseStream a viable solution. I think that LicenseStream has great potential if they get the kinks worked out.
Gary, just wanted to let you know that I was contacted by Pam Fischer from LicenseStream this week. She advised that the pricing matrix was adjusted in December so I did some random tests, including the scenario you presented above. The pricing dropped from the $10,000 quote you received to $267, a much more reasonable figure.
If you decide to play around with it again I’d love to hear if you find anything else out of line because it’s impossible to test every possible scenario. I will be participating in the beta testing of the next release later this month and hope to provide input that will make this a workable product.
Lori