pond5 now takes 65% of sales?

it's sad to see all these happening

It’s hard to understand their reasoning here. Are they this far out of touch with their contributors to have thought this was a good idea?..smh

I feel their 'reasoning' is rather cosmetic - key factor of success is that established contributors will not withdraw catalogues because they've had invested just too much (to upload and promote tracks within system).
This is 'something's better than nothing' attitude.
Could work tho.

As someone who's been selling music here for 10+ years this really is a slap in the face. Although I was dreading this day happening with all the weird changes around here recently I thought maybe it would be a drop to 40% at the most. And I agree the publishing deal thing is to soften the blow and will at most bring in a few extra pennies a year if anything. I did the same deal with another library about five years ago and so far only one cue sheet has been filed with them as publisher.

It's strange as until this year my sales were gradually increasing each year to the point where in 2018 Pond 5 made up 1/3 of my yearly income. Then suddenly at the beginning of this year my sales dropped by about 40% and have stayed there.
So now we get paid a measly 35% and don't forget there's also the 20% off sales that seem to get run every other day which i don't really understand the point of. Stock media isn't usually an impulse buy like clothes or jewelry so if someone doesn't need it for a project then I doubt they'll buy something however cheap it is and if they do need it then they'll happily pay full price for the right piece of music.

I don't know if there's new management here who don't know what they're doing or god forbid they're in a similar situation to what happened to Revostock a few years ago but it's definitely a depressing time for contributors here right now. Good luck out there everybody!

Ah, they are doing what Pump Audio did about ten years ago. It all makes sense.

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=251025

The incremental "potential" income used as the bow to wrap around the 30% royalty drop turd the handed us today is practically negligible, especially compared to how much we lose on the sales in return.

Sign up to your preferred PRO, register your titles yourself, and then you don't have to split any publishing on what's already just fractions of cents most of the time. They literally dropped that on us, as a positive, to take of percentage of a tiny percentage of our incomes to offset the blow of lowering our sales percentage by a third.

I have to assume there are some remaining Pond5 employees that feel like they can't do anything about these awful decisions and the painfully insulting ways they are dressed up, but for the love of god, please speak up and talk some sense into whatever new executive vice whatever is making these calls. Everyone will lose because of this nonsense.

It will be good to hear some thoughts from p5 curators. Mike, do you have something to say here?

What a bad news 😕

none of the people that work here would dare comment on this unless they are leaving pond5

That is not good at all, def not the type of news I am sure any of us wanted to hear ... I just got a version of the new agreement for SFX contributors that also says we will get 35% I was shocked! I do not feel that's fair at all, considering good SFX also take time to record create and edit for the final product to be ready for sale. Plus SFX are priced considerably lower then music tracks to begin with. My whole reason for wanting to sell here was because it was originally a fair split and I thought it would remain that way.

I as specially love this line ... As we continue to expand the audience for your work, we will also be adjusting your share of license revenue to align with the industry standard for a non-exclusive marketplace. So 35% for artists has become an industry standard accepted practice?

I was just trying to grow sales and my lib here and now they do this to the artist. I can see pretty much everyone is against this change. I don't see that helping contributors one bit, it is the contributors that allow places like POND 5 to exist. Without the dedicated contributors/artists here it would be just one big empty POND.

It is very sad that this has to happen here. I agree this is totally unacceptable, and I am actually surprised to see this type of thinking here at the POND I thought it was founded by artists for artists, what happen? did I misunderstand that? how is this of any good for us, the artists, the contributors? There must be a better way then this.


Here is the version of the letter SFX artists got, its shorter then what others got.

Dear Artist,

We’re deeply proud of the quality, depth, and breadth of our marketplace—thank you for your contributions to this best-in-class collection!

Developing a global customer base for your content is of the utmost importance to us. That's why we're investing heavily in serving everyone from freelancers and small businesses to production companies, agencies, and large enterprises. As we continue to expand the audience for your work, we will also be adjusting your share of license revenue to align with the industry standard for a non-exclusive marketplace.

Beginning September 3, 2019, contributors to our Sound Effects offering will begin collecting 35% of the license revenue their content generates. 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 websites while continuing to invest in developing an industry-leading marketplace for your media. We appreciate your understanding as we align with an extremely competitive landscape.

We expect the continued growth of our marketplace to directly benefit you as more buyers license more content, more frequently.