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The partnership between Flickr and Getty Images is finally moving forward. Early Wednesday the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing service announced that invitations from Getty have been going out in high numbers. Some members who have had one or more of their images chosen to be on Getty's sale site could have gotten notice as early as last week.

Originally announced in July, the special Flickr-branded Getty collection will be launching in early March. It's the first official move by Flickr where users can sell their images, although all the purchasing and organization will be done on Getty's end. In the interim Getty has set up a Flickr group where those selected can discuss licensing and rights issues if there are any.

Unlike microstock services such as iStockPhoto, Shutterstock, and Fotolia, the Getty/Flickr partnership will be royalty-free and rights-managed only. It's also going to continue to be invite-only, whereas the other sites allow user submissions.

Flickr on Tuesday entered a partnership with Getty Images to offer its users a way to potentially make money off their photography.

The Yahoo-owned photo-hosting community will be a new resource for Getty, which can now contact Flickr members directly through the site and ask them if they want to share one or more of their images for use in a special Flickr-branded Getty collection.

Flickr members interested in getting their images featured in the special Getty gallery will have to simply wait to be contacted. Otherwise, Getty and Flickr are encouraging aspiring photographers to post their content on the Getty-owned iStockphoto, which also happens to have been a hotbed for Flickr photos in the past.

Flickr-hosted images that have been chosen to be included in the new collection will get a special link to the Getty page where they can purchase a license to use the shot.

In order to get paid and allow their images to be used, Flickr members must sign a Getty Images contributor contract, which stipulates that the photographer is the owner, and has any necessary model releases and originals. It also outlines the various rates based on size and intended commercial usage.

Those rates, not yet available, are likely to follow some of Getty's standard rates. As part of the deal, the only transaction is being shared directly between the photographer and Getty, meaning Yahoo will not be getting a share of that fee. According to Yahoo's rep, "Getty and Flickr have a separate business relationship."

The move is a special deal for Flickr, which currently does not allow for commercial transactions on the site outside of using partners for services such as photo printing. It's long been expected that Flickr would get around to implementing a system like this, if only to take advantage of the size of its collection, which averages thousands of user uploads every minute.

Update: Changes have been made to this article since it first posted regarding the link to the Getty purchase pages on Flickr as well as the nature of the business partnership between Getty Images and Yahoo.

Getty Images, one of the biggest stock-photo houses, has launched a music licensing business designed to give broadcasters, movie makers and advertisers quick access to songs.

The commercial service was built with the help of Pump Audio, which Getty acquired in June. The music unit is only the start for Getty, which plans to expand the kind of content it offers.

The service will start with 20,000 original tracks by independent artists, the company said in a statement Monday. That number is tiny when compared with music libraries offered by consumer services.

For example, iTunes now boasts more than 6 million songs. Even tiny SpiralFrog, which launched its music site last month with songs from only one of the four major record labels, has about 800,000 songs.

Getty said in a statement that the company intends to partner with major record labels and publishers.

Getty Images, which made a name for itself as a stock photography clearinghouse, announced Wednesday it has purchased Pump Audio, which licenses independent music to advertising and media clients. The price of the acquisition, according to a release from Getty, was $42 million.

This is the most recent in a series of moves on Getty's part to expand beyond photography and into the digital media sector. Last month, it launched a new division in the company to license video footage and other multimedia content, and over the past few months has chalked up a string of acquisitions, from amateur photography site Scoopt to smaller competitors . The Pump Audio buy, however, marks Getty's first foray into music licensing.

For Pump Audio, which made a splash at last year's OnHollywood conference, the acquisition means that the start-up now has the keys to unlock a much broader sphere of influence. "The combination with Getty Images will give many more creative customers access to great original music," said Steve Ellis, the company's founder and CEO, "and at the same time will provide our contributing artists access to a huge, global marketplace."

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Flickr member Hamad Darwish is now a part of computing history, with two of his photographs included in Windows Vista. Usually Microsoft doesn't approach people with (we're assuming) large checks unless they're vying for a name or settling a lawsuit, but Darwish's work wowed Microsoft so much they hired him for a photo shoot.

Apparently there are three more images from Flickr users shipping with Vista, along with a few from Microsoft employees, too.

This is a cool use of services like Flickr. While Corbis, iStockPhoto, and Getty Images are all a hotbed for finding good wallpaper material, Flickr and other photo hosting services are a great place to find budding photographers who likely will be eager to have their work showcased and purchased.

[Found on Flickr blog]