Concept
Digital Artists
Digital artists upload their assets to many sites, spending lots of hours preparing and uploading, often different sites requiring different formats, attributes and keyword data, then digital artists receive different amounts of revenue per download per agency, artist with sales are paying for all the free space given away by agents to other digital artists, I think it is time for a new logistics model, one where the artist keeps controls their assets, the goal is to look at a better model for artists.
- Upload just the once to their own online storage space
- Have easy access to one tool that sets all the required data attributes
- Set their own fair prices with price bands and levels
- Be able to submit a thumbnail and media data once to a single search engine
Agencies and Merchants
Digital agencies, merchants and direct buyers currently have heavy overheads when acquiring digital media content, the costs of reviewing contributor applications and media submissions, marketing to attracting the right artists to the website, what we need is a model that will act as a pipeline to connect agents to the artists, giving the agents more time for marketing to customers, the artists could submit image data to a search engine where the agent or merchant can filter for the right content, and include this on an item by item basis to their library.
- Central search engine via an API for all media types by price band, level, licence type and attributes
- Filter options by any required attributes, keywords and detail
- Cost price would be set per media by artists and agents would mark-up from base price
- Data storage costs would be cut to a minimum
- Updates sent when suitable content comes online based on agents and merchants saved searches
Concept
To create initial discussions about a model that will provide the tools to connect the digital artists, who are the asset vendors to new and existing customers, either via direct website sales or through the approved agents and merchants, and using default data templates with a search engine where the vendor will retain full control of thier assets until the point of delivery.
What the industry does not need is another large new agency, but a new logistics model one that will not hold main assets at anytime, and will not at any point in the transaction have control over the artist’s or customers revenue.
Current Model
To monetize their digital assets many artists will upload to many different agencies or merchant sites, the existing model does not help the digital artist control and manage thier assets, often the submission rules vary from agency to agency and often the format of the asset and or asset data has to be changed to satisfy the different guidelines.
The artist will spend many hours uploading to agents websites, just to have some of thier digital assets declined and often as not being what the agency needs at this time, when the Asset is accepted and a sale takes place the artist often has to wait until sales of their assets reach a preset revenue amount before they receive any payment, a large number of digital artists do not reach the payment threshold and will never be paid the royalties due on their assets.
Uploading is free now?
This is the statement that is often used to defend the large percentages some existing agencies charge, it is much a false statement and one that artists need to think about more, as more and more digital assets become available the revenue is diluted more and more, where the agencies and merchants are also under pressure to compete in the market and will reduce prices and squeeze the artists even more.
The artists that do have sales are now paying for all the free accounts and storage of assets that may never sell, and as overhead costs grow and the traditional revenue falls the digital artists will be squeezed further.
How could a new model work?
A new model could greatly increase the royalty revenue return the artist gets, one where the digital artist is only required to upload their asset only once to a web space that the digital artist controls, this model would cut down on time spent preparing and uploading, and gives the control of the main asset back to the digital artist including setting the base price for each asset, and then once the artist has set the attribute data for the asset they could just submit the asset details to the search engine, the asset then stays under the control of the Artist only small samples and data is submitted to the search engine.
We now have a search engine index full of just asset data that the agencies would be able to search by specific terms, there currently such a huge cost to both the digital artist, agencies and merchants in uploading and reviewing digital media assets that are then not required because the agent has to many similar assets, so instead of the agencies looking for different artists and artists looking for new Agencies, the search engine would enable agents to access all the data they have done a specific search for, from many different artists, and be able to select on an item by item basis which ones to include in their library.
Who should pay what?
A new model could work on micropayments for transactions and spread the costs between the artist, agencies and merchants.
This would mean the cost is spread with the artist paying for their online storage with one of the main companies like Amazon or Microsoft, and this then gives the search engine access to the samples and data packets, this also acts for the digital artist as an online backup service for their assets, the artist would pay to submit the image samples and data and these charges would only be micropayments, larger samples would only be generated when there is a request for the data packet from an agency.
The agency would pay for their own transactions and again these would be micropayments, the agency will retrieve thumbnails when they carry out a search, they would be able to request a sample or composite for any digital asset already in their collection, when a sale happens and a full size image is requested the search engine will only carry out requests when it has received a confirmation notice or payment notification
The artist would be paid 100% of the set price by the agent at the time of delivery, the agent will retain the marked up percentage or amount they have added to the digital artists price.
Environmental Considerations
Another consideration is our carbon footprint, our digital assets when stored on many agents websites servers has no consideration for data-storage efficiency, this new model would reduce the data duplication by using the single-instance storage, and reducing storage needs by eliminating redundant assets and many servers. as only one unique instance of the image is actually retained on storage media until the point of sale, and the full digital asset uploads are replaced with a sample or thumbnail and a file pointer to the original digital asset. as an example, a digital photographer with 100 image instances of 4mb and contributing these to 6 stock imaging sites, at present this is requiring 400MB storage space per server, With data duplication this becomes 6 x 400mb, 2.4GB which will use fossil fuel to store these on the servers, with only one instance of the images being stored online and each subsequent instance just referenced back to the single saved copy, the example of 2.4GB storage demand can be reduced to only 400MB.
