Online Art Distribution Platform Report

Since Infinite Industries, a non-profit platform I am putting together with the help from some amazing folks, claims to take on the subject of online distribution of art in a balanced and open way and… since I am full of opinions and ideas that constantly try to escape the confines of my cranium, I would like to begin a series of research reports. These motivate me personally to provide a greater cohesion to my own thoughts and should provide others solid basic intros to the topics related to art and online distribution strategies.

This intro out of the way lets begin with the first report focusing on online distribution platforms. For the most part, I am not going to try to compare these, since they often have vastly different goals. I will, however, try to drop in a couple of sentences about the distinguishing characteristics of each one of the platforms presented bellow.

Monegraph
https://monegraph.com
Primarily a service for licensing visual content and registering the license on the blockchain (a huge topic of its own that I should probably take on in another post,) this company also distributes the work through their site. Digital Works Only.

Custom Digital Art Display:
Electric Object, CanViz, FRAMED, Depict, Meural
https://www.electricobjects.com/
https://frm.fm/
https://depict.com/
http://meural.com
http://canvizis.com
There is a number of custom digital art displays out right now. Electric Object is getting a little bit more love in the art press at this point but I think the field is pretty open. The biggest competition, of course, is from home TVs. Why would you want to purchase an extra one just to show art? Here the future promise is, most likely, a subscription service based on the display object. This, to my honest surprise, was precisely what was asked for by several individuals in my own, rather informal, UX study.
Digital Works Only.

Rise Art
http://www.riseart.com
Wide selection of different types of artworks. An interesting feature of this platform is collectors ability to rent and not just buy art.

Twyla
https://www.twyla.com/
Limited edition artist prints. This platform heavily emphasizes the artists’ personalities and lets the collector get a “virtual feel” for the artist as a part of the purchasing experience.

20X200
https://20x200.com
One of the pioneering online art stores; was started as an extension of a brick and mortar gallery. Each artwork is available at different sizes and price-points (edition size decreases as the price point increases.)

Exhibition A
http://www.exhibitiona.com/
A solid example of an online presence generated for an NYC art consultancy. Limited editions art prints from a respectable set of artists.

ArtList
https://artlist.co/
Sadly no longer around, this was a very interesting take on the secondary market where buyer and sellers could transact anonymously. The 10% fee and purchase insurance were unheard of in a marketplace that is famously opaque. I am hoping this idea will get resurrected in the not too distant future.

Lbry
https://lbry.io/
These folks are probably the deepest nerds in the bunch. They basically invented a cryptocurrency (back to blockchain conversation and a promise of a future post) that treats each work as an asset that can be bought and sold by the participants in the marketplace. What makes this very interesting, is a promise of a distributed network that can host a file and its license information in multiple locations. Probably a bit on the tech experimental side for most art folks at this stage but points to a very interesting future.
Digital Works Only.

One Studio
http://company.onestudio.io
Seems like an interesting take on no-brick-and-mortar gallery model. The company emphasizes a studio-like experience and lower prices. They do organize pop-up shows to feature their artists’ work. Silicone Valley represent!

Daata Editions
https://daata-editions.com/
This platform commissions artists to create limited edition works. The curation is incredibly tight by the contemporary art world standards: a very healthy mix of younger and more established artists. The prices rise as more of the individual pieces from a specific edition get sold, so there is an incentive to buy earlier. Sales history is presented together with each of the works for sale.
Digital Works Only.

s[edition]
https://www.seditionart.com/
A very well developed site with sections for curated, open platform, work from partnerships and museums, and subscription “Art Stream” service. Once purchased, the work is accessible on a variety of devices via custom apps and password protected website. The end user is not allowed to download the source files for the work. The work is sold in large, limited editions with the price increasing as more of the individual pieces are purchased. The platform gives collectors an option to resell the work once the edition is completely sold out, creating an internal secondary market.
Digital Works Only.

Opendesk
https://www.opendesk.cc/
Technically not an “art” but rather maker-oriented design site. The distribution model used by the platform is a rather interesting one. For personal use only, a user can purchase the CAD files for the piece of furniture s/he is interested in and produce it on his/her own or select a production team (at a higher price point that includes labor cost, of course) from a number of pre-qualified shops around the world.

Turning Art
https://www.turningart.com
A Netflix-like art subscription service. The cool idea here is that they provide you with a frame that you can swap prints in and out of (yes, that means that all of the pieces are the same size). You pay a monthly subscription fee which allows you to request new works. Simply slide the new work in and send the old one back.

wydr
http://wydr.co/
Self-described “Tinder for Art”, the site allows the user to quickly sort through a number of images of the works and choose the work for purchase. Not sure if there is anything else that’s different here other than the swipe right maneuver.

Art Storefronts
http://www.artstorefronts.com/
Pretty much Shopify for art: a specialized sales shell that can easily host a gallery or individual artist inventory. We are not talking high-end design, and their site screams neighborhood photo store, but there could be a much more exciting implementation of this idea in the future; think OtherPeoplesPixles for gallery context.

Artsy
https://www.artsy.net/
This might be the best-known art brand out of the bunch. It is a sort of meta-gallery, curating and filtering output by other art world entities into digestible chunks. Users are educated about goings-on in the arts and directed to sales that best fit their chosen aesthetic preferences. It is becoming an increasingly multi-sided marketplace with a variety of services offered to entities as diverse as commercial galleries and established museums.

I intentionally did not include Paddle8, artnet and other online auction sites (Artsy has also joined in on the fun which makes my statement only partially true). Admittedly, they do function as distribution platforms but generally stay within the classical online auction paradigm, albeit with significantly higher prices.

One of the main observations that can be made at this point is that physical content still matters. Us humans still seem to be obsessed with objects and a vast majority of the platforms are dealing with sales of the original works and digital prints of the said works. Even the move to custom digital art frames, emphasizes the physicality of the frame: several of the platforms listed, talk at length about the wood choices and craftsmanship involved with frame production in their promo copy.

Another observable trend is the lack of exclusive representation. I am not sure, at this point, if this is a sign of things to come or just a function of the relative immaturity of this sector of the marketplace. The only reason I am bringing this up for consideration is the fact that the dynamics of online markets generally emphasizes quick product turnover. Why would you come back to the site if there is no new content? In this climate, it might not make the most financial sense for a platform to bank on any exclusivity with a small group of artists. Artists might follow the path of fashion labels (or bands for that matter) and create a core brand with many distribution deals.

Most sites incorporate a user preference filtration system. Artsy’s Art Genome Project effort is perhaps the most ambitious standout in this case. Together with ArtStack and Curiator-type sites, this represents a very important development in reaction to the Attention Economy of today. The users push for an increasingly speedy experience of discovery amidst the general compression of data coming at them. They need to focus their attention on the art that they will be willing to purchase — attention that can be monetized. There are, of course, drawbacks to this departure from a digital flaneur model but there are definite pluses in terms of efficiency.

In a similar vein, I believe even more services will push the subscription model in the near future. Turning Art already operates this way. s[edition] has just released an “Art Stream” service. A variety of other sites in the cultural sector operate this way already (Birchbox, Spotify, etc) so the users are trained to follow and expect this particular pattern of interaction.

This field is changing at an amazing rate. If I left a platform out or a new one popped up, please hit me up in the comments.

Thank you for reading!
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