Wednesday, January 26, 2011

TANDEM Stills + Motion Launches

California Internet start-up set to revolutionize the photography and motion picture clip licensing
business


LOS ANGELES, CA – TANDEM Stills + Motion (www.TandemStock.com), a Los Angeles-based still photography and HD video clip stock licensing business, today launched its one-of-a-kind online community that bridges the gap between world-class photographers and filmmakers and consumers of their creative works.

Developed from the ground up, TANDEM employs a proprietary, state-of the art, multi-platform software that promotes self-sufficiency. Photographers, filmmakers and buyers access and manage their own archives in an entirely paperless, single-source environment, delivering and obtaining images at record levels of speed and security in the comfort of their own homes or offices. Software upgrades already are in place to meet the company’s anticipated growing demands.

“TANDEM stills + motion represents a completely new way of supplying and buying imagery online,” says Ian Shive, the company’s CEO and co-founder. “For the last several decades, photos and video largely have been sold in a vacuum by huge, controlling faceless entities at vaguelyderived prices from which the talent behind them rarely fully profited. TANDEM not only encourages its creators to be an important part of the conversation about their own work, but also wants its buyers to benefit too from knowing that when they pay for product, it’s going to be a painless process and at a fair price, not several times higher than the buyer before them.

TANDEM is all about community and transparency which has been lacking in the industry for a long time.”
To that end, TANDEM is simultaneously introducing the first-of-its-kind Rights Specific™ pricing.

TANDEM’s trademarked pricing structure was created to further the overall mission of a transparent, hassle-free purchasing experience for buyers.

“We plan to become the social network of the image world, where cool technology and a sense of community meets killer images in a monetized environment” Shive concedes. “Old-fashioned business models don’t work. They frustrate talent, and poor to non-existent management compounds the problem. We believe happier talent makes better images and better images make ecstatic art buyers.”

TANDEM, at the present time focuses primarily on travel, culture, geography, outdoor lifestyle, adventure, and nature/conservation photography and video clips of the same genres, a term Shive has coined as “a slice of life.” The company launches with three main objectives: to promote its contributors interests in a community-based environment, to allow contributors to have a more active say and profitable role in their business and for buyers of art to have a totally transparent, user-friendly, non-negotiating experience.

TANDEM offers some of the most competitive royalty rates in the industry, especially for an archive with an active sales team behind it. Image-makers who sign-up with the company will receive a 50/50 split on all sales, with annual profit-sharing distributions for all contributors. They will also receive an increased royalty of 75% on all sales of their own images referred to the company. The company also plans to publish its end-of-year earnings online to support its philosophy of transparency.

Also in another unique decision, TANDEM will accept contributions from any image-makers including amateurs, but will screen images for only the best. As Shive states “a great image can come from anywhere, why decline those works to our buyers?” Utilizing TANDEM’s revolutionary software, submissions are reviewed by the company’s core team with actual photo editors at advertising agencies, magazines and other industries also signed on to screen and enter images immediately into the TANDEM archives on a daily basis. Accepted images go live on the site instantly.

TANDEM is based in Los Angeles, California, where sales and production workflow all take place.

TANDEM is a proud supported of 1% for the Planet and the Picture Archive Council of America.

TANDEM is a division of Wild Collective, a leader in pioneering the field of multimedia production for photojournalists seeking to bring their stories to life on the Internet. Combining the award-winning vision of Hollywood's top filmmakers, Wild Collective has produced projects for leading companies such as Apple Computers, Warner Bros., and YouSendIt.com. Wild Collective also prides itself on creating numerous projects for environmental non-profits including The Nature Conservancy and National Parks Conservation Association.

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