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Prem vs FCPX – Panels
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[Andrew Kimery] “somehow paint things like Adobe Stock in a negative light, ‘See, I *told* you Adobe would find a way to raise prices’ even though rolling out an optional service like that, which anyone can use, means Adobe can increase revenue w/o having to raise CC prices. “
I added emphasis to your Adobe Stock observation because I think people are missing the biggest deal about Adobe Stock: YOU CAN SELL YOUR STUFF FROM INSIDE CREATIVE CLOUD.
I wrote about this at length last September when it was introduced at IBC, and it’s clearly worth repeating here: Adobe Stock Contributor Portal Allows Creators To Sell Their Stock Media Directly Inside Creative Cloud Applications
Please read this. It’s STAGGERING what Adobe is up to with this.
Not just Getty or Corbis or Reuters or these other giants. It’s understandable that Adobe would tout these early wins to establish that there’s a “there” to Adobe Stock that makes it useful in a wide variety of contexts that weren’t possible before, but in context, to ME, the biggest news is that YOU can sell YOUR stuff. And you can upload it from INSIDE THE APPS. My article above includes screen shots. It’s easy.
This is a big f*cking deal. You’re working in Premiere, tweaking your amazing new 360VR drone footage with Mocha VR, thinking, “I’ve never seen a piece of stock video this hot” and CLICK. POST IT FOR SALE. I’m not aware of this ever having been done before.
THAT’s why Adobe has been working so hard on a visual search engine inside Creative Cloud — to help community members monetize assets. Yes of course of course to take their slice. OF COURSE. OF COURSE. But unless MILLIONS of people just like you and me are getting OUR slice, the thing falls flat.
THAT’s ALSO why Adobe bought Fotolia, a community of photographers selling their media. I don’t know how many millions of members they have now — but it was 2 million in 2008, which is the last number I saw floating around, and surely many times more than that now. The only way Adobe can monetize that purchase (an $800 million CASH deal) is if Fotolia’s MEMBERS are monetizing their photos in a way that compels them to keep doing business through Fotolia!
So you can very rightly think of Adobe Stock as Adobe’s efforts to fund not just Creative Cloud in general, but to very specifically enable them to pay off their own investment in the business of MILLIONS of photographers.
Adobe did a similar thing with their purchase of Behance, a community site for design, typography, and the like. There were roughly a million members at the time, selling After Effects templates, artwork, fonts, etc. They also have a portfolio display technology powering websites from tiny blogs all the way up to the Smithsonian and thousands of others.
The way to monetize the acquisition of a creative community is to enable those community contributors to monetize their work in new ways.
Behance’s CEO Scott Belsky wrote a nifty answer at Quora when asked why Adobe would be interested in acquiring Behance, and why Behance would be interested in letting it happen. It’s quite beautiful, so ima just paste it here.
The community aspect of Behance is critical to understand. Indeed, TechCrunch is among the many sites who saw this as a straight social media play all the way back in 2012, as noted in the headline, Adobe Acquires Social Portfolio Platform Behance To Power Its Creative Cloud Community Features. VERY cool reading. Check it out.
Money quote: “Creative Cloud already offers creative professionals the tools, services, syncing, storage and private sharing features they need, but the addition of Behance will now also bring public sharing and communications features to it.”Behance’s Belsky says it even better: Creation should be inherently collaborative – and must evolve more frequently than typical software upgrade cycles. If the tools we use to create are connected with how we showcase and discover creative work, we can help usher in a new era of idea exchange and collaborative creation.
Read that again. Connecting the tools we create to how we showcase, discover, and monetize work.
YES, Adobe will make money on this. BUT SO CAN YOU. And if you’re not, then Adobe can’t.
Think about it. By being able to upload your stuff DIRECTLY from within Creative Cloud applications, and for millions of people around the world to BUY your stuff DIRECTLY from within Creative Cloud applications, Creative Cloud could be the one piece of software on your computer actually making you money!
Pay for your subscription? Hell, you might be able to pay for your car. Maybe your house. Your student loan. Who knows what.
Needless to say, if you’re making your stuff with FCPX or Affinity or Resolve, you can just as easily upload it for sale through Creative Cloud (you just need an Adobe ID, NOT a CC subscription), and frankly, you’re insane to not be doing this. Why would you NOT want to sell your stuff from inside Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, et al????
And as I wrote last September during IBC, Adobe’s rates are VERY good. Also worth noting: your royalties go up as more people engage with you. I have no doubt that any number of you lot can capitalize on your sparkling personalities to move beaucoup units.
A final note for now: Fotolia is photos, Behance is graphics, mograph, type, web, et al. When Adobe purchased those communities, they immediately had lots of stock assets in those categories from MILLIONS of creators. Notably missing: video. Adobe has a LOT of work to do to get their video assets going at anything resembling the same kind of footprint — but just as they have MILLIONS of contributors for stock photos and graphics, they want MILLIONS of video contributors. They NEED MILLIONS of people selling video through Adobe Stock.
FINAL final note, to underscore the community aspect of all this: the person responsible for supporting the VIDEO community within Adobe Stock is a man like to think of as “one of our own”, Dennis Radeke, whose community bona fides are well-established. One of the most community-minded people I’ve ever met, and one of the small handfuls of most generous souls you’ll work with in this industry.
So what the fgjk are you waiting for? Put Adobe to work for you. Make those bastards pay YOU. ????????
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[Andrew Kimery] “And the ‘they’ll keep raising prices’ trope.”
Oh I guarantee that the price will go up, but yeah, people who painted that horror story picture are simply wrong, and always will be. Prices are not infinitely plastic. Even in a world where Autodesk is charging (AND GETTING) $150/mo for Maya and Max, and charging (AND GETTING) $500 for Flame, those are prices for THOSE products, in THOSE markets, and represent massive shifts in value
But it underscores how ridiculous the “locked” trope is. Adobe KNOWS this. NOBODY is locked in.
[Oliver Peters] “All you have to do is activate a 1-month subscription and make the change. Or export XMLs of your vital sequences and move to a different NLE. “
Exactly. AND PEOPLE DO THIS. They do it all the time, and Adobe is watching this. They’ve given themselves the world’s largest data set on how shallow people’s commitment to them is. Heck, they fueled the first wave of conversions to CC on just that — people’s readiness to bail on a commitment that those folks were certain was bone-deep and for forever.
The whole point of this forum is that people CAN change NLEs, they DO change NLEs, and that no vendor can lock in any customer. Piss us off, and we’re gone for-EVER.
[Oliver Peters] “And Macs seem to many to be synonymous with NLEs, but that’s ONLY because of the original popularity of Avid and Media 100 systems. “
That’s a very “Mac guy” perspective. ???? I’ve worked for a couple of cross-platform developers, and I can tell you that, without even getting into the MAGIX (formerly Sony) Vegas guys who hate Macs far more than any Mac guy has ever hated Windows, and I was very briefly responsible for the Windows-only Pinnacle Liquid when I was at Avid, and I can tell you that there are a BUNCH of Premiere and Avid guys who wouldn’t touch a Mac for money.
That’s also to say nothing of the many sectors using NLEs — govt, corporate, broadcast, etc. — where Macs have been 2nd-class citizens, often for reasons that are 100% because Macs are just not well-suited for some of the tasks being performed there, Apple refused to implement industry-standard protocols, etc. Changing more under Tim Cook (whose success is largely based on reversing every major Jobsian approach to everything but Jony Ive), but still true.
I hate to sound all insider-y, but in fact Adobe, Avid, Boris and other companies I’ve worked for and with have never publicized their platform splits so I won’t share the numbers, but I think most Mac guys would be gobsmacked by how small a global footprint Mac has in NLEs. I think they’d tell me I was simply mistaken.
Or they’d gloat that no WONDER those NLEs suck on Macs, and OF COURSE the only company that can do anything right with a Mac-based NLE is Apple. I’ll let them have the last word on THAT. ????
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[Tim Wilson] “Oh I guarantee that the price will go up, but yeah, people who painted that horror story picture are simply wrong, and always will be.”
I agree that it will go up eventually (didn’t mean to imply that it never would) due to inflation, currency shifts, etc., (exchange rates already caused it to go up in the UK) but I was more talking about the doom n’ gloomers predicting Adobe jacking up prices with reckless abandon. If Adobe tries that their NLE customers will just leave, because as we’ve mentioned there are other pastures and users can move between them relatively easily.
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[Andrew Kimery] “You are offering tutorials about about software, Adobe is offering the actual software; It’s a huge difference in what’s being offered, but the models are the same (they are both subscriptions).”
FIFY.
You are offering tutorials about “HOW TO USE” the software.There is only ONE “software.”
There are many ways to learn that how to use them all, including the ability to do it without spending a dime more than acquisition of the program – making my product OPTIONAL. (If hopefully VERY useful when it’s ready to go!)
Getting “locked out of your own IP because you didn’t continue paying a third party who should NEVER (in my opinion) nor in ANY way have the ability to separate you from your OWN IP” is, in my humble opinion, so far from the same as to be in a totally different universe.
How I see it. YMMV.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Tim Wilson] “That’s why the whole “locked out forever” trope has always seemed like a straw man. Philosophically offensive to you? Fine. Walk away, shake the dust from your sandals, and never look back. But the idea that anyone is locked into anything is nonsense. “
Then let ADOBE simply give me a way to KEEP the intellectual effort I have invested in doing MY work in THEIR software.
If I leave FCP X for Premiere – without a penny to pay – I can revisit ALL my effort in my historic FCP X work as it was the moment I stopped working with X. My historic timelines remain active and alive. Because they represent MY intellectual effort.
I suspect that if I could go back into my archives and find a copy of my FCP 1.0 software, load it into a machine that will run it, I could also load up the very first edit I created 25 years ago and make changes in it.
THAT is the issue here.
The subscription model AS PRACTICED by Adobe cuts their customers off from what I see as the customers own unique property in ways counter to those customers best interests. Adobe values THEIR IP over MINE and codifies that value into their subscription approach.
And I don’t think it’s an accident that this serves their business interests in making it harder to leave, the longer you create work in their system.
And sorry, but an XML pooped out that when loaded into another NLE loses a significant part of my work and makes me start over is NOT the same as letting me go in and access my own work from where I left off without further cost.
We will ALWAYS disagree on this.
And so it goes.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Tim Wilson] “I added emphasis to your Adobe Stock observation because I think people are missing the biggest deal about Adobe Stock: YOU CAN SELL YOUR STUFF FROM INSIDE CREATIVE CLOUD.”
I those folks can hope that it works better for them than most of the “royalty” based services in the history of the creative arts.
Where the VAST majority of content creators historically saw royalty checks measured in pennies.Be interesting when we start seeing stories from folks we know who are uploading their stuff to Stock, and perhaps start chatting about what kind of money they’re making in REAL terms.
In a system that essentially enables a million “stock video houses” – how will any one of them beat the odds and make any serious money?
Time will tell.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Tim Wilson] “YOU CAN SELL YOUR STUFF FROM INSIDE CREATIVE CLOUD.”
So, Stock might become the craigslist of imagery: “I got a picture of my uncle passed out at Thanksgiving. Who will give me $.50 for it?”
Just throw your crap up there and see what happens? Is anyone curating the imagery?
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Bill Davis] “I those folks can hope that it works better for them than most of the “royalty” based services in the history of the creative arts.
Where the VAST majority of content creators historically saw royalty checks measured in pennies. “[Scott Witthaus] “Just throw your crap up there and see what happens? Is anyone curating the imagery?”
Some people see the glass half full, some see it as half empty, and some folks see it as some combination of evil, incompetent, greedy, or worthless. ????????????
Jeez louise, it’s stock media. People have been selling stock media for decades. This isn’t some stealth attack on artistic integrity invented by Adobe. Go look at Fotolia. Go look at Behance. They’ve been around for years. Adobe has owned them for years. Millions of people using them. FOR YEARS.
The new part is that they’re putting this right in the Creative Cloud applications.
And yes, Scott, it’s curated. I forgive you for not reading my article ???? but I talk about it there. And again, the communities feeding this have been around for a long time. Curation abounds.
Any of the good enough for you to want to use? You decide. Me, I’ve never been to ANY stock agency where ALL of it was to my liking. I’ve never been to one where MOST of it was to my liking. So my guess is that 99% of it won’t be to your liking, and that even if it’s to your liking, you’ll be lucky to find more than a couple of pieces that fit your needs. Isn’t that ALWAYS the way? With ANY stock media? Or stock music? Or what to watch on TV? ????
That’s why I like options. More options are always better than fewer options.
Apparently not everyone agrees. More curators are better than more choices? Seriously?
[Bill Davis] “In a system that essentially enables a million “stock video houses” – how will any one of them beat the odds and make any serious money?”
From an artist’s point of view, Adobe is paying better than almost anyone else, 33%, and higher if your stuff is exclusive to them. iStock or Pond5 won’t make you that deal. Is that enough? Maybe, maybe not, but “more than pretty much anyone else” is pretty good.
But I feel like that question is rhetorical, surely. Everyone here has benefitted by sneaking in under the standards and pricing of somebody before us. ???? We are the people that our predecessors lamented were coming, and they were right.
Bill, you’re dedicating your career to empowering people to create. Some of those people are going to beat somebody here out of a job real soon. Some of them are going to make it harder for you to keep YOUR job when they post their tips to YouTube for free, so even a $5 subscription will seem like too much.
Heck, you think we haven’t seen people learn how to build communities at Creative COW and go start their own elsewhere? Sure we have, and it’s going to keep happening.
That’s life on the wheel of karma. You stay ahead by doing stuff that’s WORTH the price, and you ride the ride as far as it’ll take you. You trust that making things better for the people who need help right this second will in the long run make things better for EVERYONE.
Be honest. If Apple offered you a chance to sell XinTwo from directly inside FCP, for a royalty as good or better as the going rate, would you take them up on it? Or would you feel like the whole thing was a threat to your ability to make serious money because so many other people would have the same shot?
Or would you see it as a golden new opportunity to reach directly out to potential customers, exactly when and where they most needed your product?
I think that’s an easy question, so easy that I’m afraid that you’ll take the question as an insult when I don’t mean it as one.
But this does make another compare/contrast in the context that Oliver first brought up a week ago to start this thread. (Was it only a week? ????????????) Adobe’s approach to panels: willing to sacrifice the pinnacle of beauty, unity, and integration in favor of extensibility, partnership, and community.
Apple’s approach: well…. ???? Beauty is truth, truth is beauty, no third parties are pretty enough, and customers aren’t to be trusted. Certainly not trusted enough to sell their stuff from inside our four perfect walls. ????
Hey, no harm intended. This is just me goofing around on a Friday night in my bathrobe, waiting for The Vampire Diaries series finale to begin…but I’m not buying that an established stock media business, paying better than usual rates, that people have been accessing via web browsers for years, is somehow suddenly sinister because it’s available inside a Creative Cloud application.
Adobe Stock, like ALL stock media, was a good opportunity before you heard about this. It’s a better opportunity now.
What people do with that opportunity? Well, to borrow a phrase from a much wiser man, time has been telling, and so far, it’s a pretty good tale.
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[Tim Wilson] “Adobe Stock, like ALL stock media, was a good opportunity before you heard about this. It’s a better opportunity now. “
Sorry Tim. My post was pure tongue-in-cheek. Forgot the “wink” emoji.
I saw what Adobe was doing with Stock at the Max conference and came away mightily impressed. The search functionality alone was simply wicked. And all you need is an Adobe ID to use it versus having to have the Cloud.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Tim Wilson] “Some people see the glass half full, some see it as half empty, and some folks see it as some combination of evil, incompetent, greedy, or worthless. ????????????”
Nah, just typical “hardball business.”
I suspect that when your primary play is to your stockholders rather than to your customers, this is the result. That’s my opinion, and it’s going to be pretty hard to change, not because I’m not open to another narrative, but simply because I can’t figure out ANY other reason they elected NOT to do the same thing with Premiere Pro they did with Photoshop and Lightroom.
Why they let THOSE subscribers keep foundational editing access to THEIR work – but to put a barrier between the exact same thing for video editors and mograph folks just doesn’t make sense to me.
Yes, maybe there’s a reason for that behavior that was opaque to me at the time I was paying attention to this stuff – but when I find a clear difference between two things that could be the same, but are not – I try to figure out what the difference might be.
That’s all.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.
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