Dreamstime
online royalty-free microstock photography provider
DreamsTime.com is an online royalty-free microstock provider based in Brentwood, Tennessee.
History
The company started in the year 2000 as a website selling royalty-free images and was redesigned as a “community enabled” microstock provider in 2004, entering the market after its rivals iStock and Shutterstock. According to Nashville Business Journal, the company had sales approaching $10 million on the year 2007 with revenue growing expected to grow to $15 million in 2008. Their image database consisted of 25 million files from 170,000 different contributors from all around the world in the year 2014 and of 49 million files in November 2016.
Facilities and staff
Dreamstime is headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee, USA. Serban Enache is the CEO, Owner & Co-Founder of Dreamstime, a platform with 198 million stock images, and is currently the world's largest stock community with 46 million users.
Business model
Dreamstime stock photographs are licensed around the world through the website with the individual contributors curating their own image portfolios and providing their own image info and search keywords with the company handling image hosting and providing the search tools to find the images. Like most other microstock companies, DreamsTime accepts anyone as contributor and relies on them to grow their file database. The images are licensed as royalty free, meaning one license has unlimited uses. Prices of the licenses images vary from $0.20 to thousands of dollars, of which the contributor receives a percentage. Besides stock photography and illustrations the company also allows curation of stock footage.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Dreamstime” as online royalty-free microstock photography provider. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as online royalty-free microstock photography provider. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7547248. VIAF identifies the subject as 305940327. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000, 2004, 2007 and 2008.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Dreamstime”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Dreamstime primary sources, Dreamstime archive and Dreamstime research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Dreamstime”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Dreamstime” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.