Seed&Spark Ends Own Subscription Service, Partners with IndieFlix on Robust Streaming Library — Exclusive
Seed&Spark announced Thursday that it is ending its proprietary subscription streaming service later this month as it shifts its distribution focus to new impact-driven initiatives. Seed&Spark’s library will next be heading to IndieFlix in a pair of moves executives say will strengthen both companies in a media landscape increasingly driven by corporate heavyweights. The Seed&Spark titles will join a 4,300-strong IndieFlix library that includes everything from “Sid and Nancy” to festival-favorite shorts and “Bonanza.”
Seed&Spark’s streaming platform allowed filmmakers to submit their work directly; accepted projects enjoyed a 50-50 revenue split. About 100 creators, representing about 200 titles, opted to have their titles transferred to IndieFlix. Similarly, IndieFlix allows filmmakers to submit their work directly to the platform for consideration. They’re paid based on a model that pools subscription revenue and pays filmmakers on a minutes-watched rate.
“With the Seed&Spark library, my goal is to get it live and have a home for that content,” said IndieFlix CEO Scilla Andreen. “It represents community, which is what we are — we use films to connect people.”
Andreen said the additions to her service’s library are part of a mandate to grow the service’s library with meaningful content that can create conversations using the power of film. And with open submissions and a transparent royalty model, Andreen said IndieFlix will continue to help fill a need for filmmakers increasingly shut out of platforms like Amazon Prime Video Direct, which last month stopped accepting shorts and non-fiction submissions, cutting out a major digital revenue stream for filmmakers and distributors.
Seed&Spark CEO Emily Best said her company is refocusing distribution efforts around programs that use independent short films from around the world as part of implicit bias and other workplace trainings. That was a piece of the company’s business born out of the pandemic that it has found new success in, with more developments in that realm to be announced soon.
“IndieFlix and Seed&Spark are among very few companies in this independent digital entertainment space who have survived the last decades, while also contending with these tremendous market forces of monopolistic power and consolidation at the top,” Best said. “We have stayed deeply focused on delivering on our mission, including shuttering business units that we don’t feel like completely serve, while finding business lines that nobody else is finding because they’re still competing in the monopolistic space.”
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