Deviant Art And Fotolia Collaborate

Microstock agency Fotolia and art community DeviantART have announced a collaboration. In the deal Fotolia will add its’ contributors content to DeviantART in phase one and will later facilitate members to license their art.

PRESS RELEASE

Fotolia and deviantART announced today their plans to blend the international microstock business of Fotolia.com with deviantART’s worldwide social network of artists by launching the “deviantART Stock Project with Fotolia.” This new offering is part of deviantART’s plans to establish an integrated commercial stock offering within its network and serves Fotolia’s goal of expanding its footprint in the U.S..

DeviantART is currently home to 15 million members around the world and represents the largest online aggregation of microstock users. The Stock Project marks the first time a microstock provider is tapping the power of community for greater distribution and participation.

“DeviantART is the purest of all artist communities throughout the world. It works on democratic philosophy that complements our goals with Fotolia. We believe that the stock industry should be an open even-playing field for all artists and not set up elitist barriers to entry. We see a lot of synergies with how deviantART has democratized art and created a safe and welcoming environment,” said Oleg Tscheltzoff, founder and CEO of Fotolia. “The success of deviantART goes far beyond its impressive member base. When you take a look at the site you can see a community working together to make things happen for artists. The culture of sharing and learning is a natural magnet.”

“Our community uses microstock in high volumes. We wanted to introduce a solution with affordable purchase options, simple licensing terms and without heavy subscription costs. But it was more important to have a partner like Fotolia that understands the importance as a business of developing community as resource,” said Angelo Sotira, founder and CEO of deviantART. “We talked with all the major stock houses and Fotolia was the only partner for us. They offer an extensive collection of commercial stock assets and expertise; They consistently offer the best prices for stock and the best split for artists who want to contribute to the stock catalog; and Fotolia has a strong international presence that serves our global membership.”

The initial offering will increase the amount of stock already available on deviantART.com and provide members with commercial tools to facilitate an image-licensing program. The fully integrated product, expected next year, will provide members with seamless on-site access to microstock assets and create a unique deviantART collection from the community’s resources.

You might recall that several times during the past few months, we asked community members for feedback and input regarding the state of stock resources on deviantART. After much research, including digging through and taking into account each and every comment left by deviants, we’ve decided to start down the path of building a fully integrated commercial stock offering on deviantART. In doing so, we will dedicate resources to accomplish this in a way that uniquely reflects the community and serves its special interests and needs.

We’re starting off with two important initiatives: a partnership with Fotolia.com and the deviantART Stock Project (#StockProject).

We’ve chosen to partner with Fotolia, a leading microstock provider worldwide, for their extensive collection of commercial stock assets and their expertise. Here’s why:

• it consistently offers the best prices for stock
• it consistently offers the best split for artists who make stock
• it has an international footprint
• perhaps most importantly, it has a management attitude that understands the importance to their business of developing community as resource — a point of view not shared by any of its competitors