Digital Artists upload their Assets to many sites, spending lots of hours preparing and uploading, often different sites requiring different formats, and receive different amounts of revenue per download per agency, Artist with sales are paying for all the free space given away by websites to other Artists, I think it is time for a new logistics model, one where the Artist controls their assets, the goal is to look at a model for Artists to

• Upload once to their own online storage space
• Have easy tools to set all the required attributes
• Set their own fair prices with price bands 
• Be able to submit once to a singe search engine

Agencies and Merchants

Digital Agencies, Merchants and Buyers currently have heavy overheads when aquiring content, the costs of reviewing contributor applications and media submissions and attracting the right artists to the website, we need a model that will act as a pipeline to connect Agents to the Artists, giving the Agents the time for marketing, the Artists would submit image data to a search engine where the Agent can filter for the right content and include on an item by item basis to their library 

• Central Search Engine for all media by price band and licence type  
• Filter by required attributes, keywords and detail 
• Costs to be set per media by artists and Agents to mark-up from base price 
• Data storage costs cut to a minimum
• Updates when suitable content comes online based on saved searches 

Concept

To create Discussions about a model that will provide the tools to connect Digital Artists who are the Vendors to new and existing Customers, either via Direct Sales or through Agents and Merchants, by using default data templates and a search engine where the Vendor will retain full control of their assets until the point of delivery

What we do not need is a new agency, but a new logistics model that will not hold your main assets at any time, and will not at any point in the transaction have control over the Artist's or Customers revenue

Current Model

To monetize their Digital Assets many Artists upload to many different Agency sites, I believe that the existing model does not help the digital artist to control and manage their assets, the submission rules vary from Agent to Agent and often the format of the asset has to be changed to satisfy the different guidelines

The Artist may spend many hours uploading to Agents websites just to have some of their Digital Assets declined as not being what the Agency needs at this time, where the Asset is accepted and a sale takes place the Artist often has to wait until sales of their Assets reach a revenue value before they receive a payment, a large number of Artists do not reach a payment threshold and will never be paid

Uploading is free now?

This is the statement that is often used to defend the large percentages some existing sites charge, it is a false statement and one Artists need to think about more, as more and more Digital Assets become available the revenue is diluted more and more, the Agencies are also under pressure to compete and reduce prices and squeeze the Artists more

The Artists that do have sales are paying for all the free accounts and Assets that may never sell as costs grow and traditional revenue falls the Artists will be squeezed further

How could a new model work?

A new model could increase the return the artist gets, where the Artist is only required to upload once to a space the Artist controls, this would cut down on time spent uploading, gives the control of the Main Asset back to the Artist including setting a base price for each asset, once the artist has set the data for the Asset they could submit the asset details to a search engine, the asset stays with the Artist only data is submitted

We now have a search engine full of Asset data that the Agencies can search, there is a huge cost to both Artist and Agent in uploading and reviewing Assets that are not required, so instead of the Agent looking for Artists and Artists looking for Agents, the search engine will enable Agents to access the data they have searched for from many different Artists and be able to select on an item by item basis which ones to include in their library

Who should pay what?

A new model could work on micropayments for transactions and spread the costs between the Artist and Agency

The Artist would pay for their online storage with one of the main companies like Amazon or Microsoft and this gives the Search Engine access to the data packets and the Artist an online backup for their assets, the Artist would pay to submit the image data these charges would only be micropayments and only be generated when there is a request for the data packet from an Agent.

The Agency would pay for their own transactions and again these would be micropayments, the agency will retrieve thumbnails when they carry out a search, they would be able to request a composite for any image in their collection, when a sale happens and a full size image is requested the search engine will only carry out requests when it has received a confirmation or payment notification

The Artist will be paid 100% of the set cost by the Agent at the time of delivery, the Agent will retain the marked up percentage or amount 

Environmental Considerations

Another consideration is our carbon footprint, our images when stored on many stock imaging sites servers has no consideration for data-storage efficiency, this model reduces the Data duplication by using single-instance storage, and reducing storage needs by eliminating redundant images and many servers. as only one unique instance of the image is actually retained on storage media until the point of sale, and the full image uploads are replaced with a thumbnail and a pointer to the original copy. For example, a photographer with 100 image instances of 4mb and contributing these to 6 stock imaging sites, at present requiring 400MB storage space per server, With data duplication this becomes 6 x 400mb, 2.4GB which will use fossil fuel to store these on the servers, with only one instance of the images being stored online; and each subsequent instance is just referenced back to the single saved copy. In this example a 2.4GB storage demand can be reduced to only 400MB.

Get Involved

I have created a Group website to discuss this model and a logistics website, after input from artists I would like to turn it into reality, the websites can be found at:

Discussion Group: http://digitalmediaartists.collectivex.com/

Digital Logistics: www.digitalweblogistics.com

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