Alamy Images

I received an interesting email from Alamy Images regarding what they call "Novel Use".

In essence what Alamy Images is trying to do, is target a market segment dominated by the microstock sites. Of course, it's not quite as simple as that, but that the gist of it.

Here's an excerpt of what I received:

"- Alamy Limited Use is not the same as microstock.

- Microstock images are available to all buyers of stock photography.

- Alamy Limited Use restricts usage to three types of user - teachers,
students, and bloggers - none of whom feature in our customer base.

- This is not the beginning of a shift towards universally low prices
at Alamy. It is not in our interests to slash prices of our conventional
business to microstock levels, but nevertheless we think that we have
something to offer this market. In 2007 the market leader in microstock
generated over $70m in revenue and is projected to achieve over $120m
this year. This business model is here to stay and we are leaving
money on the table by not taking the opportunity to compete with them
in some areas."

Lots of folks have responded in shock and anger. The feel they've been misled. Alamy has given its contributors an option to opt out of this scheme. That's good.

I can understand where Alamy is coming from, and their business point of view. Unfortunately for them, they've got to walk a tightrope for a while and see how things play out with the market they are after and with the contributors who provide the commodity the images buyers are after.

I have to say that I wasn't surprised in the least. In fact I've been expecting something like this and frankly I'm surprised that this has happened sooner.

As the saying goes: "May you live in interesting times". We certainly do.... in more ways than one.