pond5 now takes 65% of sales?

And an admin fee from the publishing if you sign up? Please tell me this is a joke.

Where are you seeing that? Do you have a link?

This is absolutely not acceptable.

I just got it. here is the entire email:

Dear Artist,
Our music offering is an important component of our marketplace and we’re deeply proud of its quality, depth, and breadth - thank you for your contributions to this best-in-class collection!

We are very pleased to announce a new, free service that will generate incremental revenue for you: Pond5 Publishing.

When you register your tracks with Pond5 Publishing, we’ll leverage our scale, resources, and sales data to collect performance royalties on your behalf.
These performance royalties are recurring payments that are made to rights holders (in this case you, the Pond5 music contributor) when their musical work is broadcast on film or television. Performance royalty rates generally depend on placements and audience size. (For example, national commercials and television theme songs will pay better than a regional ad.) The most active buyers in the Pond5 marketplace include the leading film and television production companies in the world, making this program a promising new revenue opportunity.

Historically, collecting performance royalties can be a difficult, time-consuming, and costly process. More importantly, it can be very challenging for a rights holder to obtain the details required to collect accurate performance royalties (including identifying the end user for a given musical work and where the work was broadcast). However, with Pond5 Publishing that all changes: we manage all of this on your behalf, ultimately maximizing the performance royalties you are entitled to and creating a new income stream.
Key information about the program:

These performance royalties are in addition to the upfront license revenue you receive when your track is licensed through Pond5.
You will keep all of your writer and publisher performance royalties, less a standard admin fee from the publisher share to cover our expenses.
We will make every effort to ensure that buyers file cue sheets and provide relevant information for public broadcasts on film and TV.
You are not required to license exclusively through Pond5 in order to participate in Pond5 Publishing.
Participation in Pond5 Publishing does not interfere with other publishing arrangements you may have, as we will only be collecting performance royalties generated by tracks licensed through Pond5.
We will help you sign up as a writer with a performing rights organization if you are not already (which is a prerequisite to collecting performance royalties and completely free with BMI).
You’re in control - you decide whether to participate in Pond5 Publishing.
As we launch Pond5 Publishing, we will also be adjusting your share of license revenue to align with the industry standard for a non-exclusive marketplace. Beginning September 3rd, 2019, contributors to our Music and Sound Effects offerings will begin collecting 35% of the license revenue their content generates through Pond5. We did not make this change lightly but we are no longer able to pay a materially higher revenue share for the same content available on competing marketplaces while continuing to invest in developing a global customer base for your content. We appreciate your understanding as we align with an extremely competitive landscape.

While the reduction in upfront license revenue may be disappointing for some, we believe you will benefit from the potentially significant income associated with Pond5 Publishing. Those who are already collecting performance royalties understand how these recurring payments can materially exceed the one-time revenue their tracks generate when licensed through Pond5. We strongly encourage you to enroll in Pond5 Publishing to benefit from this important new revenue opportunity.
We look forward to what the future holds for Pond5 and our artist community.

To learn more about Pond5 Publishing and join the waitlist, please visit Pond5 Publishing. You can view the updated contributor agreement here: Pond5 Contributor Agreement.

For any other questions, please contact support@pond5.com.

Thank you for your music, time, and collaboration,

The Pond5 Team

I see this in the contributor agreement.
iii.For Music Tracks and Sound Effects, your share of Net License Revenue will be 35%,
Didn't know it was so low for music but I don't see anything about a admin fee.

it was not that low until today. they switched it from 50/50. they could have had the option for an exclusive license if they wanted to but I guess this is a better way to skim off the top. I dunno, it's really awful. My motivation for uploading music just went to zero.

Terrible news.

The admin fee would apply only to their new Publishing service.

I’ve been regularly contributing music to Pond5 for a few years and sloooooowly building sales. This new license split puts me immediately on hold submitting new content and I’ll be investigating other options. That split is terrible, insulting actually. I hope they reconsider. If not, I’ll be removing my entire catalog.

This is just bollocks. Most of the people purchasing RF music use it for youtube or other web platforms today and royalties will in no way make up for the 15% cut of our income they just made. Pond5 publishing is just a ruse to make us think this will hurt less. Also, contributors that want to collect royalties are perfectly capable of registering their works with a PRO, but that's not the point. Most of the clients come to a RF library because they want the music to be ROYALTY FREE. Which is Pond5s whole deal. This will most probably just chase away customers that are not familiar with how royalties work and they'll just go to Audiojungle or some other micro licensing site. This is a totally low blow for music artists. Wish they just had the balls to say "Hey, we're taking another 15% of your payday" at the start of the email instead of this publishing bollocks.

If this really comes into effect, I'll just stop uploading new content and focus on actual butique libraries that are doing proper TV and film licenses. There's no point in wasting my time here anymore.

Bad news for all audio contributors. Authors now forced to increase their prices. It will definitely affect buyers.