Updating story
On Monday PhotoArchiveNews.com was invited to speak with Craig Peters the Senior Vice President, Business Development, Content and Product at Getty Images. Craig is charged with integrating the millions of images from Corbis Images to maximise on Getty’s distribution deal with the Visual China Group.
We accepted after confirming there would be no script or PR blurb, just an open conversation about the Corbis VCG situation. Throughout the 40 minute call Craig seemed remarkably calm considering the task he and his team have to perform over the coming months. They will not be migrating all Corbis content to the Getty Images platform, they will be be assessing historical licensing sales data, contributors image collections and activity (you would have to have been an active contributor to get on the Getty bench here) to then chose who they will be offering ‘direct contracts’ with Getty Images. The rest have to apply through the normal new contributor channels. The same will apply to Veer via iStock.
Veer customers and subscribers will be offered ‘generous’ iStock credit packages which will give them access to video and music content.
• All contributors should have had an email over night confirming Getty’s activity …the ‘chosen ones’ will have to decide whether to go with the new home of Corbis Images.
Craig also told us Corbis had planned to close the Demotix platform (something PhotoArchiveNews.com had wind of a few months ago) and that the site was making ‘sub 7 figures US in licensing revenue’ with many of the contributing photographers ‘inactive’.
We asked him about the Corbis hard copy archives, and there’s some good news! …Getty Images have undertaken the maintenance and preservation of the Bettmann archive in Pennsylvania and the Sygma archive in Paris.
Seems Getty Images really are taking their time to digest content they feel will be commercially viable for Ex Corbis contributors within the Getty Images platform.
• FAQ’s here for Veer to iStock