Have any of you with families on myFonts noticed a drastic reduction in sales since Monotype started pushing their subscription service? Before they took over my family sales were pretty healthy, now it's mainly singles with the occasional family. Anybody else noticed the same?
5
Comments
(Not sure why Stephen would vote that down.)
That way, the 'vendor' doesn't take a cut of the profit, and doesn't have to pay nearly as much taxes. It would have to be orgnized as a non-profit.
* https://www.microsoft.com/typography/links/News.aspx?NID=515
@Jasper de Waard We are working on something like that, as indicated at the end of this ATypI talk.
>>"Once you drive pricing down, it is hard to raise prices again. "
True, but no serious foundry can publish quality type families every 3 months selling them at $29. It's simply unsustainable. Myfonts may be profiting from this scheme now but at the cost of becoming a repository of dubious quality fonts and lookalikes.
Yes, I know there are some good and decent foundries at Myfonts but the company is not making it easy for them.
I am of the opinion that like in every cultural industry there will always be different markets for different tastes. Some distributors will choose profit over anything else and others will privilege quality and originality as their unique selling proposition.
More than ever it's important to educate clients about the differences.
The average price of sold units (combining both singles and families) has fallen sharply over the last three years. It was stable for at least five years, hovering at $40 throughout 2008–12, but dropped to $38 in 2013 and again to $36 in 2014. In the last quarter of 2016 it was at $34.
Unfortunately, I don’t have more specific data so can’t pinpoint a single cause. As others have mentioned, there are various suspects: decreasing family sales, the Monotype Library Subscription, and other notable MyFonts trends during this period that lead to cheaper fonts, like heavy discounting and frequent flash sales from Monotype as well as third-party foundries.
And of course we have to consider outside influences as well, such as cheap and free alternatives from Typekit (library subscription) and Google, whose collections and influence grew significantly during this period. Webfont services also gained traction in 2013–14. Despite these alternative sources, my individual affiliate sales at MyFonts actually went up during those years — it was the average price of each unit that fell.
In early 2015 units sold began to decline steadily and have not recovered. This was many months before the introduction of the MT Library Subscription, so I wouldn’t blame it specifically.
Maybe renting is harming sales too. (It would be interesting to learn what proportion of Fontstand renters end up buying.)