30,000 Premium Clips, at Affordable Prices, Will Go Online in January
Subscription-based stock footage purveyor VideoBlocks announced today that it has added the Discovery Channel's royalty-free video library to its stock Marketplace. Some 30,000 clips, captured at exceptional resolutions during the channel's coverage of natural wonders, wildlife and human cultures around the world, will be available for purchase on the VideoBlocks Marketplace in early 2016. The new footage will be priced at the same rates—$49 for HD and $199 for 4K—as all other content in its library. To date, the company has clocked more than 37 million downloads from its other source clips, motion backgrounds and After Effects templates and expects the new content to push those numbers much higher.
"Discovery reached out to us to find out if we could work together and I initially never thought anything would come of it," says VideoBlocks CEO Joel Holland. "But talks soon got serious when Discovery pointed out they had all this cutting-room-floor yet amazing, high-quality footage, just sitting on drives and wanted to monetize it. We agreed that the VideoBlocks customer base might be the perfect place to do that. But we didn't want to create some special library that was super expensive. We wanted to offer the clips at the same price. The whole point of VideoBlocks is to make this stuff affordable for the mainstream creator. And they were OK with that. It's a testament to the reputation we've built as a high-volume distributor of very high-quality footage."
It is also a reflection of VideoBlocks' unique business model, which lets Discovery, as a contributor to the Marketplace, keep all of the commission on each sale.
With the company in growth mode, Holland hired Greta Pittard, head of content acquisition and contributor engagement, this summer to foster similar future partnerships and grow the broader contributor community. Pittard has worked as a producer in documentary television for Showtime and The Smithsonian's joint venture Smithsonian Channel, as well as at Discovery and its offshoots, including TLC and The Science Channel, prior to joining the company. After several recent social media campaigns launched featuring contributors on Instagram and the company's blog, Pittard says, interest in the highlighted contributors immediately spiked. Downloads continue to intensify, she adds, doubling each month since August. "The response from our partners and customers has been tremendous, and it's been great to be a part of the exponential growth of the Marketplace, having just come on in June."
When asked to predict which clips could be the most popular with users, Pittard admits it's anyone's guess. "I don't know what's not going to be a top seller, frankly. You've got establishing shots of cities and establishing shots of Antarctica, historical re-enactments, adventure sports, crime and forensics, migrating wildlife, close-ups of bizarre animals, cultures from around the globe. It's got everything you want, and it's gorgeous."
