14 Sep 2015 Adobe Stock Launches Subscription Sharing for Creative Cloud for Teams

Following the recent limited-time 50% discount on single image purchases. Adobe Stock now releases ‘Pooled Images’, a feature for Creative Cloud for Teams.

Pooled images allows all members of a team full access to all images licensed by the team, at no added cost.

The New Feature

All members of Creative Cloud for Teams accounts are automatically upgraded to the new system: the Adobe Stock subscription previously available only to the single account that was subscribed will simply be extended to the rest of the team members.

The user interface will now allow them to see the remaining downloads on their shared Adobe Stock subscription, as well as all images already licensed by other team members. Previously purchased images are available to be re-downloaded without needing to re-license them.

Microstock agency subscriptions typically use technology to limit the quantity of simultaneous sessions using each subscription, encouraging customers to purchase multiple subscriptions or use their enterprise services rather than allowing multiple staff to use a single subscription.

Multi-seat License

‘Pooled Images’ is essentially a multi-seat license, where the license allows multiple people within an organisation to access the image file simultaneously.

Fotolia, as the subsidiary supply the content, is the only top microstock agency which includes these rights as part of their Standard License as you can see in this comparison of Extended License rights. Most other agencies charge around $70 for those rights, or don’t offer them at all. Adobe is able to include these rights for free in Creative Cloud for Teams without making any contributor-impacting changes.

That being said, multi-seat is – from what I can tell – the least purchased Extended License, and it’s surely the most ignored, abused and infringed condition of standard licenses.

I wouldn’t be surprised if other agencies changed their licenses to include multi-seat rights in their standard licenses soon.

Further Reducing ‘Unnecessary’ Sales

A typical stock subscription customer downloads various images to see which one works best in their design or to present multiple options to the decision-maker.  Given the nature of subscriptions, the customer will typically download the un-watermarked image, generating a sale for the contributor.  Adobe has eliminated this need by including high-resolution  watermarked images inside the applications, and making it almost no work to convert a watermarked comp to a paid, un-watermarked version.

Now with shared subscriptions and pooled images, they’re also eliminating any excess licensing done separately by multiple members of a single team.

Connecting the supply of images at the point of use is proving valuable for customers, cutting down on what are technically unnecessary purchases. In addition to value for the customer, this is more value for the agency as fewer paid downloads means less royalties to pay out.