Ioanni Mitsakis September 14th, 2016

Stocky.pro: Free Commercial-Use Photos, Music, Videos, and Graphics

Is there a state called enough when it comes to free resources? I don't think so. The fresh service Stocky.pro is additonally special, as it doesn't only offer photos and graphics, but even music and videos for free use. [caption id="attachment_77976" align="alignnone" width="640"]Stocky.pro: the Rather Plain, but Appropriate Landing Page Stocky.pro: the Rather Plain, but Appropriate Landing Page. (Screenshot: Noupe)[/caption]

Stocky.pro: A Lone Wolf From the Ural Has High Ambitions

Stocky.pro was brought into my filter bubble via Product Hunt. The page has gone online not too long ago. It is being run by the lone fighter Alexey Kokov from Yekaterinburg in the Russian Ural. Kokov's goal is to offer all types of digital media that someone could ever need for commercial purposes for free via Stocky.pro. This goes so far, that he actively asks his visitors to order certain content. He'll take care of it and deliver just these materials on Stocky.pro. This sounds altruistic, and it probably is, at least for now. According to his own statement, Kokov prefers working on Stocky.pro during the night and on the weekends, as his main job and family already take up a majority of his time. [caption id="attachment_77975" align="alignnone" width="640"]stocky-example Preview on a Thematic Image Download. (Screenshot: Noupe)[/caption] Kokovs vision for Stocky.pro is running a content marketing hub, on which companies can both provide and freely access content. At the moment, he's excluding advertisements. He does not want to sell premium services. For us users, this means that Stocky.pro is completely free, and it is supposed to stay like this. The provided material can be used for free for any legal purpose, in private, commercial, and customer projects. I was not able to make out how Kokov wants to earn money with this, yet. After all, he considers Stocky.pro to be his startup. Well, let's just wait and see.

Stocky.pro: Manageable Offer With Any Theme Focus

When designing such a service on a drafting table, you most certainly would not act the way Kokov is acting with Stocky.pro. At the moment, you'll already find a decent amount of different resources for digital use on Stocky.pro. However, the material provided is somewhat random, because the owner has dealt with some topics more than with others. Thus, you need a good amount of luck trying to find what you really need in your current project on Stocky.pro. Things will be much easier on larger, classic stock providers. However, one has to admit that the provided elements have good to very good quality. This includes the vector files as well as photos, videos, and music. The product range is small but the products are worth a look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1sRNsGolew Stocky-Example: If You Are a blogging Knitter or a knitting Blogger, this Video could be Useful for You... When it comes to music and videos, one thing that's nicely done is the preview. Kokov uses YouTube for the videos, and Soundcloud for music. This way, you won't have to blindly download something, and you'll get to test whether the elements satisfy your needs in terms of content and quality. There are no thematic divisions into categories (yet). Finding interesting elements is either done via browsing through what's there, or using the free text search, which can be found hidden in a hamburger menu. Alongsinde the resources you'll find a few tags to characterize the respective element. Clicking one of these tags will open a grid that contains all content with the same tag attached to it. Talking about grids, Stocky.pro strongly reminds me of Pinterest and other card based designs. Conclusion: At the very least, Stocky.pro should be in your bookmark collection for observation purposes. Free music and video sources are still quite rare. The rest is also promising.

Ioanni Mitsakis

Ioanni Mitsakis is front-end developer at a major European automotive supplier and responsible for the look & feel of their internal cloud-based apps. As his employer works internationally with distributed teams world-wide, a rock-solid development foundation is what Ioanni aims for. He better should ;-)

3 comments

  1. Ioanni – Thank you for sharing this unique new *free* resource. As you suggested, I promptly bookmarked it. I enjoyed browsing the site. I could see it as a great source of inspiration when planning a design project – or when hitting a sticking point.

  2. I like the free services of stocky.pro. It’s so nice to use video and music for free. Its great. Thanks.

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