Is Flickr’s new “Request to License” feature via Getty Images a big deal? For Flickr, it’s a feature that aids their competitive positioning. For Getty, it just adds to their efforts to bring more images to the market. For a photographer, it’s just the chance to make money where there was really no chance before, without any extra effort. And that’s fine. It is what it is.

The middle line is what’s new.

On the Flickr Blog,

Starting today in the Flickrverse, Flickr members and visitors can work with each other through a new program with Getty Images called “Request to License”. We’ve built this program on the success of our launch of the Flickr Collection on Getty Images just over one year ago.

Finally.

The original Flickr / Getty deal was a wasted opportunity for innovation in stock photography.

But perhaps it was just a start, the minimum viable product, the necessary first step towards a broader integration. Finally, with this announcement, Flickr and Getty take the next step towards curating photos rather than curating photographers.

But is it a big deal?

As Rob Haggart at A Photo Editor notes on the new Flickr / Getty opportunity,

Giving people the option to buy instead of steal or CC license images is a good thing. It’s only a bad thing if you’re a Flickr photographer who thinks selling images to Getty actually leads somewhere (see BBC Story).

See, here’s the thing. Right now, this is a feature, not a venture. I doubt Getty or Flickr are expecting massive sales out of it, and I’d bet they’ve set expectations accordingly. The goal is to make it possible for someone to buy what they might otherwise steal.

It’s actually a stronger offering as a competitive strike against Flickr’s competitors, combining the social, community nature of the site with the opportunity, however slight, to sell what might have otherwise been stolen. If they continue the partnership with a digital watermarking and enforcement engine, then that’s more powerful.

It fits within the broader trend of unbundling the stack of services in the photography industry taking an image from idea to buyer, by bringing more images under the realm of “available to buy”.

But for an individual photographer, it’s not a serious opportunity. It isn’t intended for any photographer that is trying to evaluate which stock agency to use to distribute their images. It’s for the photographer that already uses Flickr and is now a little happier that they *might* make a little money. And it’s certainly nothing any photographer interested in selling stock licenses should really care about, except for the fact that it only continues the price pressures in the industry.

It’s just the chance to make money where there was really no chance before, without any extra effort. And that’s fine. It is what it is.

Recap from CEPIC, coming soon.

Updated June 23
Jonathan Warren wrote an interesting anaylsis about the Flickr “Request to License” feature in his post The Getty Monster, focusing on Getty’s 70% commission from image sales via this feature. Of note:

Now Getty doesn’t have editors crawling Flickr what exactly are they doing for their 70% cut? Before digital cameras came on the scene photographers would send agencies their slides or negatives, the agency would scan or print them, touch them up and make any colour corrections before sending them on to clients as digital files or prints. They would negotiate sales with clients and at the end of the month they would send the photographer a sales sheet showing what had sold to who and for how much. For this work agencies would take a 50/50 cut of the sales, more generous agencies gave photographers a 60/40 cut.

So now photographers are capturing their files digitally, making adjustments on their computer, captioning and keywording files before uploading them to Flickr. And all Getty are doing for their massive 70% cut is negotiating a price when someone asks and sending the invoice. That doesn’t sound like a fair deal for photographers who are doing more than 70% of the work.

Honestly, the fact is that Getty can take a 70% cut, so they will. The vast majority of photographers using Flickr aren’t using it to sell but to share; it’s a social exercise, not a commercial enterprise. People adjust, caption and keyword for themselves and their friends, not for Getty. Any sales are gravy.

Any comparison to the old 60/40 split is irrelevant. Uploading and making an image available to buy on Flickr is an entirely different exercise than attempting to sell through a stock agency. But more fundamentally, we all know it’s a very different market for images than it used to be. The old split made sense in the old market. The new split makes sense in today’s market. That’s how change works.