The term midstock has suddenly appeared in the stock photo industry trade press.

I noticed that the stock photo company Lucky Oliver used the term earlier this year to denote pricing between $1 images (microstock) and traditional royalty free images at about $100.

Getty Images has just launched their Valueline product which is aimed at the supposed midstock market ($19 per image for Web resolution and $49 for all other resolutions).

Where does Jupiterimages stand on the midstock question? We doubt that current microstock customers are going to leave this tier and jump to midstock. Quality in microstock is only getting better, editing is tighter and image search is smarter. The microstock customer has nothing to gain from a quality perspective by paying more for images when they already fulfill their design needs for $1.

Furthermore we think that the entry point for the budget customer is with the best value today - which is subscription or microstock.

Given Jupiterimages' past efforts with subscriptions and microstock, we think we are well poised for now and the future as our myriad offerings are appealing to the budget customer and the high end custmer.

There is a paradigm shift taking place. We now have a market for high end Rights Managed and a bunch of RF offerings. However RF offerings will only be successful with creative economical pricing ranging from microstock to offerings such as our Jupiter Images Unlimited which offers great value for the very best RF images.

As for midstock, I think it is a concept whose time "has not come." In other words the midstock price point is really too expensive for the evolving stock photo market place. Midstock sounds exciting but it might already be dead.