Pond 5 lowering artist share to 30% (and exclusive to 40%)

In any case, another clear sign of excessive exploitation!

For me, this means that only the “garbage” is uploaded here - with Shutter, this has been the case for me since the $0.10 changeover.

Does anyone have any idea what the rate for dataset earnings was before the new 20%? I haven't found anything in the old pages https://www.pond5.com/legal/contributor

Maybe we need to take a page out of history, and unionize to negotiate fairness to us, the contributors? These stock companies have us contributors at a disadvantage. I have different media with several different stock agencies, although I am exclusive with Pond5 for my videos. They all do this. They get us to put up our media with promises of passive income of 50-60%, so they become big. After they become big, they become portals, and then, they dictate the terms. If you don't like it, you can leave, but all those hours of toil with descriptions and keywords is left behind! And, where will you go, anyway?

Pond5 has turned to the dark side since Shutterstock took over. What a surprise.

Corporate greed rears its ugly head once again. Happy holidays.

"Corporate greed rears its ugly head once again."

Corporate greed has never laid it's head down...

Pond5 Just broke the Exclusive agreement I signed

Pretty much expected since Shutterstock bought them.
First stop the ability to set prices, then reduce prices, then reduce the royalty on those new prices.

Wont be long before subscription is mandatory and we're down to 20 cent video sales and after that, absorbed into SS completely and wont exist as a separate platform.

It does appear this violates the exclusive agreement by failing to give the required notice so nobody at all has any reason to stay true to it now.

That's it i'm done with any future uploads, as per my stills image collections on other sites. The writing has been on the wall for several years now. When you consider money spent for gear and travel, just not cost effective. I will leave my existing collections up & earning but time to finish up on this ever dwindling market. Good luck to those who persevere.

This is all Shutterstock. Was inevitable the commission rates would drop eventually, just didn’t expect so much in one go. Shutterstock rates are worse of course, I think different tiers based on how much stock you have on site – to encourage you to upload more. This will be the ultimate outcome for Pond5 contributors I reckon.

I actually had to read the email twice! The wording in these agreement updates is laughable. They follow the standard 30% royalty with ‘ …while Exclusive video artists will earn an increased royalty of 40%’. Call a spade a spade and stop insulting our intelligence.

Not clear if ‘Pond5 Subscription, Global Market Earnings, and Partner Earnings programs’ being included in these new rates is good or bad. What was the rate for these earnings before?

We are being taken for muppets. Would workers in any other industry accept being paid less and less?!

Bin seit 15 Jahren bei pond5.
Ich werde nichts mehr hochladen.
Die Firma war einmal gut. Habe tausende clips hochgeladen. Jetzt wollen sie uns ausbeuten und den Vertrag brechen!

Hope translated this correctly
[I've been with pond5 for 15 years.
I won't upload anything anymore.
The company was once good. I uploaded thousands of clips. Now they want to exploit us and break the contract!]

Technically it's not a breach in contract but a change in contract. They have just given us very short notice of it and right before the Christmas holidays. We can of course choose to withdraw our clips if we don't accept the new terms. But as has been said when we have already invested so much time and effort and there is really is no where else to sell which will offer any better terms they can squeeze us as much as they like.

We could all simply stop uploading as you and others have suggested. However, if the terms are altered much further against contributors such as more in line with Shutterstock's own I might have to consider whether the amount I earn in a year is worth sacrificing the value and respect for my creative content.

Maybe the time comes you, me, we should just say ENOUGH and withdraw our media altogether and forego ANY stock income for the sake of our creative integrity and self-respect.