Shutterstock has 10 million images, don’t forget to shop around

The “arms-race” for the size of picture libraries continues. Shutterstock  announced it has now hit 10 million images. The announcement means that there are now libraries close to 10 million across the spectrum of microstock, subscription and rights managed/royalty free companies.

With this many images on offer it pays off to compare prices as with libraries of this size there are certainly overlaps. Spiderpic  has already developed a solution to compare prices of identical images on different sites. (but be aware of different licensing terms). Image libraries are quickly expanding their offering thanks to advances in technology and the addition of user generated content.

Shutterstock also announced it has reached 125 million downloads. The subscription service that started with 30.000 images is seeing a growing number of challengers. The latest one inGetty Images , the company that launched their own subscription service Thinkstock  recently.

Shutterstock has over   200,000  photographers and accepts about 40% of the images that are submitted. It’s now the  largest online subscription image library in the world. Images are licensed under the royalty free  licensing model.

With the continued, and accelerated, growth of picture libraries there are opportunities to find images for most uses now. Key is to check out the licensing terms and ensure the images are available at the right price so buyers can optimize the amount of images available within budgets.

 Picture: Stock Exchange | Goldfish | A.-Feldmann