Getty Images Holdings Inc (NYSE: GETY) is a visual content licensing company that licenses photos, videos, and music to customers worldwide through its Getty Images and iStock platforms. Revenue is generated by charging customers for content licenses under royalty-free (RF), Rights-Ready, subscription, and transactional purchase models. As of FY2025, the company had 689,000 total purchasing customers, 278,000 active annual subscribers, and a content library of 609 million images and 36 million videos. The annual subscriber revenue retention rate was 89.9% in FY2025, down from 92.9% in FY2024. Content contributors, including photographers and third-party content partners, are paid royalties of 20% to 50% of the license fee depending on the license model. The company carries significant debt, with total long-term indebtedness and interest obligations of approximately $2.59 billion across all periods per the FY2025 10-K. Getty Images reported a net loss of $206.2 million in FY2025, compared to net income of $39.5 million in FY2024.

Revenue model

Getty Images generates revenue by licensing visual content through subscriptions and individual transactional purchases. Subscription customers pay recurring fees for access to images and video; transactional customers pay per download or per license. The company also licenses content for AI data training sets and offers generative AI image tools launched in September 2023 (Getty Images) and January 2024 (iStock). Contributors receive royalties of 20% to 50% of the license fee; wholly-owned content carries no third-party royalty cost.

Products and services

Getty Images operates two primary consumer-facing brands: Getty Images, targeting enterprise and professional customers, and iStock, targeting smaller businesses and individual creators. Content types include still photography, video (with a 15.9% video attachment rate in FY2025), and music. Licensing models include royalty-free (RF), Rights-Ready video, editorial subscriptions, and editorial feeds. The company launched Generative AI by Getty Images and Generative AI by iStock in 2023 and 2024, respectively, offering text-to-image generation trained on licensed Getty Images content.

Customers and end markets

Customers span virtually every country excluding sanctioned jurisdictions. As of FY2025, total purchasing customers were 689,000 and paid download volume was 92 million. End markets include advertising agencies, media companies, corporate marketing teams, editorial publishers, and individual creators. Customer acquisition cost was $146 in FY2025, down over 15% from 2019.

Value-chain role

Getty Images sits between content creators (photographers, filmmakers, music providers, and content partners) and end-use licensees. It aggregates, curates, and distributes licensed content through its digital platforms, handles licensing compliance, and distributes royalties to contributors. The company also produces wholly-owned editorial content through staff photographers, for which no third-party royalties are owed.

Geographic exposure

Getty Images licenses content to customers in virtually every country in the world, excluding sanctioned countries, per the FY2025 10-K filing. The filing does not provide a specific revenue breakdown by geography.

Source: SEC 10-K, filed 2026-03-16

Industry: Services-Business Services, NEC