10 Nov 2015 Stocksy Introduces Exclusive Buy-outs Product ‘Market Freeze’

Yesterday Stocksy United launched Market Freeze, a license option that allows customers to buy the exclusive rights for usage of images for up to five years.

Exclusive buy-outs are a common feature in the premium market, where they’re infrequent but lucrative, usually fetching upwards of $10,000 each.  However, they’re usually indefinite rather than a limited period of time. In microstock, only Dreamstime has a similar option with their opt-in ‘Buy the Rights’ license.

Market Freeze

The new license includes the rights of Extended Licenses –  unlimited print, unlimited multi-seat, and products for resale rights.  The price starts at $1250 for six months exclusivity and runs up to $9000 for 5 years. A custom duration is also available by contacting the company.

Exclusive Buy-outs in Microstock

Stocksy has a clear advantage over other stock companies in introducing exclusive buy-outs, since their entire library is exclusive, and to my knowledge doesn’t allow images previously available elsewhere. This greatly simplifies the process of granting exclusive rights given the image doesn’t need to be pulled down from other distributors – a process which can take some time.

What’s not yet clear is how they manage exclusive usage rights for images that have been previously licensed. The option may be unavailable in those cases, or they may provide buyers a limited licensing history of the image where possible.  Stocksy haven’t yet responded to a request for clarification on this detail.