pond5 now takes 65% of sales?

Yes some companies start out with good intentions, but sooner or later as they get bigger more popular, restaff etc the good intentions turn to greed. I'd say pond5 want the artists to fund internal pay rises.

Don't be GREEDY Pond5, be FAIR. 50/50

@guscave - I'm going to leave mine until Sept 2, the day before their wonderful new deal kicks in.

I am totally against raising my prices just to compensate for an unfair split. If I thought I could get $100 per track, I would have been doing it a long time ago.

At some point, the license split isn't effective for me to generate an income, not to mention fair. For me, that point is 50/50. Composers that go along with 65/35 are agreeing to terms that I think are not only ineffective for them in the long run, but are damaging the industry, especially for composers. This is the race to the bottom. I won't be a part of it.

clearly this is going to make people unhappy but on the plus side people are increasing their prices, i have only a small portfolio mainly images and video but for the life of me why are people selling footage at £13 for hd and £43 for 4k, and images for £3-5 music tracks for £13...... the race to the bottom is fast and people re doing themselves and the industry no favours by giving their work away because they think they will sell more than someone that sets a fair price, worse things have happened a while back a print on demand site suddenly made the maximum commission rate 5% so instead of setting your own rate at 30-50% you then had a fraction and this site charged an admin fee so some artists that had worked for months or years building up there works ended up in negative at the end of the month,i closed my account the day that happened, another site that encouraged artists to upload a lot of products allowed us to create templates, overnight put a cap of 100000 products some people had left their day job had 1.5 million products only to have not only most of their work removed but it put them in financial difficulty , good luck to those increasing their prices

i said it before and say It again INCREASE PRICES, INCREASE PRICES, INCREASE PRICES! its the only way for everyone to win.

If Pond5 changed their split to 95/5 in their favor, would you still stick it out and just raise prices? Raising prices may have some benefits overall in this industry, but is not an effective long term strategy in regards unfair license splits. Also, the disrespectful way they rolled this out indicates they think we're idiots and they'll take advantage any chance they get. I don't do business with people I don't trust.

Well I need to make up for the loss somehow so raising my prices is the only way.

Hey guys. Please, every single producer here should take the time to send at least an email to Pond5.

Ranting about the situation in a forum is important, but not sufficient at all - make your voice heard. I highly doubt most of the people at P5 support those decisions to treat contributors like that. Even the split at the moment is hardly sustainable.

Take a look at the extended licenses, you almost get nothing right now.
E.g. I sold a premium license for one of my tracks today, the list price is $140,22 (my prices are in €).
P5 keeps $65,63 in fees, that's 46,7%. Then they take their 50%.
That's 73.4% of the list price. Now our share even gets reduced by 30%.

Those decisions make platforms like Pond5 obsolete. Just do the math yourself. The money you actually pay (!) to license your work for a commission that low, could easily be invested in promoting it yourself, resulting in a much higher revenue after a short period of time.

It's funny to see the different splits.. whoever decides that music/audio should receive the lowest split doesn't even have the slightest idea about the topic they are deciding on.
But hey, I gotta say, if musicians/producers want to bend over and play the victim over and over again as they did historically, P5's decisions seem justified after all.

Again, please, make your voice heard, and write at least an email. Don't behave like a victim, you aren't one.
If you don't take responsibility, others will for you. And then this won't be the bottom. As many here mentioned before, the splits will get worse and worse over time. And in the end that's our fault, not the one of Pond5 or any other platform.

I agree - a feedback email to P5 would be good, but only if you have done some actions: removed a catalogue or increased prices (or have such intentions which will be executed by 2nd Sep).
If it's just words without actions - it won't have that effect.

Slightly offtopic (to make ppl believe they can make a difference):
Imagine music producer as an investor. He holds an assets that can generate income (music catalogue).
Being investor is to carefully examine opportunities and make right decisions.

The question is:
can you imagine investor involved, let's say, in construction, when being told - "we cut yer share by 30%" - he agrees and doing nothing?
Well, I cannot :)
He'll just pull out.
Can you pull out and make a difference?
Hell yea!
Will you lose in a short term? Maybe.
But let's be honest - if you have golden catalogue which nets you hundreds bucks per month - it's not the question of website which selling it. Most likely other services will do the job as well.
Providers are many and they should struggle for having you on board!
That's the attitude music producer should have.

I saw a post in another forum where they were talking about creating a direct licensing platform for stock music similar to Beatstars. For those unfamiliar with Beatstars, you basically pay a monthly fee to have your music stored on an online platform where you set your own prices, set up any discounts and keep 100% of your sale. The site will do its own promotion and marketing and you can do the same through social media to attract potential clients.

This has worked very well for Hip Hop producers getting beats sold to Artists. Some of these producers are making 6 figure salaries. However just like anything else it can easily get saturated and you do have to do a lot of promotion to stand out from the crowded field. But the upside is, if successful you won’t need sites like P5 that take unfair splits.

@Elysium - I did send an email to Pond5 the day I received theirs. It took 3 days for them to get back to me with "your feedback is important... this was a difficult decision... competitive market... blah blah blah..." They thought this through and they aren't going back. And as I said before, at this stage, even if they backtracked on the split, I no longer trust them. So, it's not about me ranting on a forum or feeling like a victim. I'm making a pragmatic decision to leave a partner that is changing the agreement and taking more than 50%. I'll take a hit short time with lost sales, but I believe in the long run I'll be better off finding a more effective approach to license my music. My tracks will all be pulled Sept 2 so I can take advantage of the current 50/50 split. This is another pragmatic decision.

My hope is that this move by Pond5 will eventually destroy their music business, not because I want them to be punished, but because something has to change in this industry to swing the pendulum back in favor of composers. I'm motivated to make music licensing a full-time job. The direction we are going, especially in RF, is making that nearly impossible.

@guscave - I really like this concept you mention. I actually wondered if I could start my own library with SourceAudio, but I think it'd be cost-prohibitive and a ton of not-music related work to get the platform up and then market. It looks like Beatstars already offers a product to sell music (not just beats), including a 10-track free version where they take 30%, or a $180 a year paid version where the composer keeps 100% of sales. It looks worth exploring for sure.