Pond5 Public Domain Project Discussion Thread

Hello everyone,

We've been hard at work for a big release today: <a href:”www.pond5.com/free>The Public Domain Project.</a>

Our little "Marketplace for Creativity" now hosts the first ever public domain media archive collected & tailored for content creators...copyright-free for perpetual use. At 80,000 items of historic footage, audio, images and 3d models (so far), we think you’ll find something useful.

Why’s it free? The answer is easy: it already belongs to you.

Public Domain content is already free through public archives and government agencies, but we’re the first to organize it for media makers at this magnitude so that it’s easily accessible and useable.

From the very start, it’s always been our mission to provide the tools and resources to empower creativity and we hope you enjoy the access to the this trove of historic content.

There's been some discussion on this already, but I wanted to create an official discussion thread. I will be monitoring this thread, as well as the rest of the forums, and I will be available to answer any questions or concerns you guys have. :)

This is a copy of my post on the other thread with some revisions (I think this thread might be the one that carries on, though the other has an intriguing title):

I can't comment yet on the implications for most sellers, though I think it won't hurt, and will probably help. But I've been having my first encounter with the Public Domain audio on P5 for the last hour+ while I've been searching for music (to buy for a show).

Scattered among the search results are fascinating PD audio clips of recordings of "folk" singers from the late 1930's -- part of WPA or other projects, I imagine. It makes you stop and listen; a welcome diversion from listening to corporate music clips. What a nice treat. (Producers and editors can put on their headsets and pretend they're listening to +motivational +proud.) And not just the singing or playing, but audio clips of the descriptions by the people recording. (It would be nice if the descriptions were linked to the music they are describing, however).

I did a quick search for some stock footage for fun -- Ellis Island - among the results there are those old Edison films of immigrants arriving. So, now that I think about it, this does add a nice resource for an editor or producer looking for footage, e.g. Ellis Island. The search results have the old and the new on the same screen. So how easy is that?

I just tried to search for something that I knew would not be Public Domain and sure enough no results.

What would perhaps be nice, and of benefit to sellers would be to have some kind of "We have results available in our Royalty Free Library that you can purchase. Would you like to see these results?" option.

TE

EXCELLENT idea. Even if a free clip is found at least give the buyer an option to see similar RF clips.

@TheEngineer: Very good idea, indeed. I'm putting it in our list of feature requests. Thanks!

Great idea, congratulations Pond5!

+1 for TheEngineer's idea.

I haven't seen a single sale of my royalty free footage on Pond5 since the Public Domain project took effect. Anybody else have a similar experience?

Nope, actually sales this week are better.
You have 92 files, sales will be sporadic with that number.

I had pretty consistent sales before, not a lot but consistent. Now nothing. And the fact that I have only 92 clips is immaterial since most purchasers tend to buy the same clips over and over.

OK, your lack of sales must be the PD clips.