Some of these troupes, such as Human Giant and Derrick Comedy, gave birth to comedy stars like Rob Huebel, Aziz Ansari and Donald Glover — but what nearly all of these sketch troupes have in common is the fact that most of them aren’t really working together anymore.

One of these troupes was Olde English, which rose to prominence in 2006 and 2007, with popular shorts including One Picture Every Day and Akon Calls T-Pain. But their latest project might be their last: A feature-length film, riffing off the titular party game, called The Exquisite Corpse Project.

Exquisite Corpse Project is a hybrid of comedy and drama, documentary and fiction, and also, in its unique way, a coming-of-age story. The film tracks five filmmakers, either former members of Olde English or frequent collaborators, who co-wrote a feature-length film; each person, however, was only able to read the last five pages of the previous section before writing their section.

The results are a mish-mash of different genres and stories, with characters changing personality and in some cases even names depending on the whims of the writers. The actors remain the same, but the story is in constant flux.

In between clips of the various segments, meanwhile, the filmmakers are interviewed: Some of whom were fully engaged with the project and some of whom might have been deliberately trying to sabotage it.

But according to director/producer Ben Popik, who spearheaded the project, it was an opportunity to work with his friends one last time, before they permanently scattered from Brooklyn to other careers and destinations, including Los Angeles and Belize.

Appropriately enough, Exquisite Corpse Project has found its home in digital distribution, similar in style to the model being developed by VHX and Chill Direct. However, Exquisite Corpse can be found via a new player on the scene: The Awl comedy brand Splitsider, which launched the Splitsider Presents brand with the release of Exquisite Corpse.

Pay attention when you download, though — while Exquisite Corpse only costs $5, Splitsider has some very specific rules for its purchase. From the landing page:

“You can download the video 5 times. Once you’ve got it, it’s yours to do with as you like: sync it to your Zune, stream it over wi-fi to your spouse, burn
it to DVD, etc.”

“You get 3 video streams and each stream lasts 6 hours. When they’re all gone, you will need to purchase the show again to do more streaming. (Download a copy to keep it forever.)”

Exquisite Corpse Project is the sort of film that defines niche — an independent docu-comedy about the making of a movie — however, it fits well with a brand like Splitsider’s. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this approach, and what other projects Splitsider decides to take on.

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Beginning in January, according to founder Rob Millis, the Dynamo player will no longer be open to any creators wishing to charge users for their content — instead, the company will be refocusing on white label services for those in need of digital distribution.

“Really, for us it’s about how the market doesn’t need a public option like Dynamo anymore — it makes more sense to go the private contract path,” Millis said via phone. “It’s been our best users and their needs who have driven this decision — our biggest users are people asking for more tailored develpment.”

Dynamo will continue to support existing projects that earn at least $100 a month — those not generating sales and continuing to use Dynamo as an archival player will have to pay a monthly fee to continue doing so. Future customers will have to contract with the company to distribute via the Dynamo player.

However, those contracts come with the options of broader services, such as iTunes distribution or custom app development. “You have professionals going to three different firms to get all these things, but we have enough expertise in these fields — we’d like to be a one stop shop,” Millis said.

Founded in 2009, Dynamo was early to the pay-to-play business model — its proprietary player, beta-launched in May 2010, let creators set the pricing and terms for their content, with a 70/30 profit split.

“Online revenue at that point was a 50 percent split with advertisers, with no real transparency,” Millis said. “Now, after being out for a few years, the market has a few options out there.”

Those options include companies such as VHX and Chill, which have both in the last few months refocused on creating marketplaces for paid content. But while Millis mentioned being intrigued by them — “VHX and Chill have interesting things they’re doing with destination sites and introducing people to content” — the company he was really interested in seeing move further into the paid content space was Vimeo.

“We’ve been waiting for them to get into this market for four years now,” he said. “If they take it seriously and move away from the tip jar beta testing approach, I’m much more confident about where Vimeo is in five years than Chill is in three years.”

When asked if there were things he’d have done differently over the course of Dynamo’s development, Millis said that while he would have made the same decisions, he might have made them faster.

He also mentioned that he “completely overestimated the foresight and innovation within Hollywood. It’s an industry and community that really wants to be more innovative but doesn’t know how to. It’s why Dynamo making changes, to help.”

“You beat piracy by making content available easily at a reasonable price,” he added. “That’s something the big media companies haven’t figured out yet.”

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VHX is now taking submissions from anyone looking for premium independent distribution for their content, distribution over which they have full control: VHX releases are DRM-free and optimized across all platforms, including mobile, tablet and game consoles.

At this stage, the submission process boils down to “email VHX,” as the VHX team is focused on making sure that each release lives up to a certain level of quality. “We put the ‘Contact Us’ button front and center because it’s really about getting in touch with us,” co-founder Jamie Wilkinson said via phone. “Long-term, [VHX is] about the democratization of the video distribution process, but for right now we’re trying to make sure it’s high-quality content we’re putting out — working with selected filmmakers so we can give them the white glove treatment they need.”

If your content passes muster, partnering with VHX for distribution means being able to sell your content directly from your own site, with the VHX team providing direct assistance with SEO optimization, design, marketing and more.

While the profit split VHX takes with its clients is not yet public, Wilkinson did say that it’s a smaller cut than iTunes takes. “Plus, we’re very transparent about how much of that is what we make versus our expenses,” he added. “Whatever a traditional distributor does, we want to do exactly the opposite.”

This includes encouraging clients to use multiple distribution platforms, not just VHX. “The internet has completely changed expectations — it’s a customer service economy now,” Wilkinson said. “Everything has to be available everywhere.”

Wilkinson estimated the number of people who have reached out since VHX for Artists was first announced in the low hundreds. “The big challenge for us over the next 12 months is spreading awareness that we’re here. Because when people find out about us, they immediately get it,” he said.

VHX has partnered with Paypal and Amazon to handle the payment processes, a process that Wilkinson said was a bit difficult the first time, because of the amount of revenue they were taking in. Prior to the Aziz Ansari special launch, worried that as a new company getting a sudden influx of orders, Amazon might shut them down for suspicious behavior, they called Amazon to let them know in advance that they weren’t “Russian money launderers.”

Now, however, they now have a relationship with Amazon, as well as other vendors. “We only need to solve these problems once — then it works for all of our clients,” Wilkinson said.

Clients also receive live analytics on how their content is performing, including audience demographics — and because customers use their email addresses to set up an account, this means the creator has an opportunity to contact them down the line.

According to Wilkinson, 50 percent of the people who purchased Aziz Ansari – Dangerously Delicious opted into the Aziz Ansari newsletter — which meant Ansari had “tens of thousands, almost hundreds of thousands” of new subscribers (Wilkinson’s estimation) to whom he could then promote future projects.

The VHX team has grown to eight people, and they’re also looking for more (including a hand model, though expect competition for that one to be tough). Projects include working on the recently-launched Star Wars Uncut sequel and continuing to maintain the community side of VHX.

For, while there is some pressure for the company to phase out the site’s video discovery component and focus entirely on distribution, Wilkinson said that there might be a way to combine both elements — especially as the community side might be able to serve as discovery for VHX’s paid content. “We fully intend to bring it all together,” he said.

Wilkinson said that between now and November, a half-dozen more projects from a variety of genres are set to roll out. “It’s all over the place — feature films, documentaries — things that you can’t super-put into buckets.”

Looking forward, VHX may also experiment with serialized or subscription content — by focusing on individual projects, the company is able to stay flexible how it approaches distribution. “So many of the other solutions out there have this cookie cutter approach, but we want to make sure that we give each release a unique strategy,” Wilkinson said. “We can adapt on the fly — if something doesn’t work, we can fix it.”

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Distrify

Founders: Peter Gerard (CEO) and Andy Green
Founded: June 2011 (soft launch)
Content it hosts: Primarily feature-length films, though there are plans available for short films and web series
Can any creator use it? Yes.
What the creator gets: 70 percent of every sale. If anyone registered as an affiliate shares a film, however, they receive 10 percent of the revenue for all sales made from that location, which Distrify and the creator split equally. The first film you upload to Distrify is free — uploading subsequent films costs $3.17 per month per film.
What it costs the viewer: Creators set their own pricing.
What makes it different? According to international business manager Stephen Green via email, “Distrify puts rights holders in complete control… You can sell films on our platform, and use our technology to build your own platform. Our affiliate scheme incentivizes sharing, so your platform is not just a destination, it’s a launchpad for the viral distribution of your films. We have placed a payment gateway within the Player, and by aligning the point of discovery with the point of sale, a film-lover doesn’t have to leave that site to buy or watch the film. It’s quite simply the easiest way to watch a film.”

Dynamo

Founders: Will Coghlin and Rob Millis (Millis runs Dynamo full-time)
Founded: March 2010
Content it hosts: Primarily independent film, though not exclusively — examples including the web series Anyone But Me, which used the player for a fundraising drive.
Can any creator use it? Yes.
What the creator gets: 70 percent of each sale.
What it costs the viewer: Creators set their own prices, as well as the length of rental period.
What makes it different? According to Millis via email, “Dynamo Player offers producers and distributors the fastest, most effective way to offer online rentals on their own sites, Facebook pages and anywhere else online without any up-front cost. Simply upload, set your price and then embed the video player on your own site or anywhere else online. We give you total control over pricing, rental period, geoblocking, and the ability to include all the bonus content you want, or bundle a complete season of episodes for a single price.”

Just the Story.tv

Founders: Carter Mason (CEO) and Matthew Arevalo (COO)
Founded: February 2012
Content it hosts: Web originals including previously-released series like Asylum, GOLD, and Vampire Zombie Werewolf. This spring, JTS will have the exclusive on the first seasons of Generic Girl and Continuum, as well as the second season of Jeff Lewis 5-Minute Comedy Hour.
Can any creator use it? JTS is curated, but creators can submit their series for consideration.
What the creator gets: A certain percentage of 50 percent of the subscription revenue, determined by viewcounts. As Mason explains via email, “If a show got 10 percent of the views in March, it will receive 10 percent of the creator’s pool. 50 percent of all subscription revenue we receive goes into the pool.”
What it costs the viewer: $3.99 a month for unlimited access.
What makes it different? According to Mason, “We’re more like HBO for Independent television than other distribution platforms out there for web series. In fact, ‘distribution platform’ probably does not accurately describe JTS.TV, and we prefer to be characterized as a premium independent tv network… While we do try to look at anything sent our way, we select our shows, screening them for quality and the willingness of the show’s producers to work within the JTS.TV system. We get several submissions weekly from producers who would like their show to be on JTS.TV, and most of them do not meet the high bar we set.”

Prescreen

Founders: Shawn Bercuson, Dan Rummel, Tyler Seymore, John Smart, Wes Donohoe, Lee Wilson
Founded: September 2011
Content it hosts: A limited selection of independent films, which are available for at least 60 days. Titles include From Time to Time, starring Maggie Smith and Dominic West, and the Australian blockbuster Tomorrow, When the War Began.
Can any creator use it? Prescreen is a curated service, but filmmakers can submit their work for consideration.
What the creator gets: 50 percent of the revenue from the film.
What it costs the viewer: Film prices range from $2-$8 (usually $4).
What makes it different? According to Rummel via email, “For the consumer, we pride ourselves on a curated selection of films, some of which are pre-theatrical and/or exclusive. Also we are a highly social platform that provides exclusive access to filmmakers and members of the cast. For the film industry, we collect unprecedented amounts of data that will enable the film industry to rejuvenate and optimize both their marketing and investment strategies.”

VHX for Artists

Founder/CEO: Jamie Wilkinson and Casey Pugh
Founded: March 2012
Content it hosts: Aziz Ansari released his new stand-up special through the service just this week; the program is not yet open to other creators.
Can any creator use it? Limited to a project-by-project basis, though Wilkinson hopes to open it up to all in the future, and welcomes creators to email artists@vhx.tv for more information.
What the creator gets: “We have not finalized costs or revenue sharing specifics, but we like the Kickstarter model: sharing in the profits invests us in our artists, because we share in their success,” Wilkinson said via email.
What it costs the viewer: TBD — Ansari, like Louie CK before him, is charging $5 for his special.
What makes it different? According to Wilkinson, “[Pugh] and I have a long history with Internet video and online communities, and our goal is to help both consumers and creators achieve media nirvana in an increasingly post-TV environment. What differentiates VHX and our technology is a laser-focus on the video and the user experience… Success stories like Kickstarter and Louis CK’s special really demonstrate the latent economic power that exists inside fan communities. It’s clear that if you take a new approach to Internet distribution — ditch old-media-mandated DRM and region-restrictions, and just make it easy for people to buy your awesome videos — that people are not only willing but excited to support artists directly. In the process consumers get a much better experience — fast, restriction-free, easier than torrenting! — and artists make more money and retain more control.” UPDATE: Also, Wilkinson adds, “We actually provide downloadable files! We’ve seen incredible response to that one small fact. People want to own it, put it on their PS3, iPad, Xbox, Kindle Fire… we’ve been really quite amazed.”

Watchbox

Founder/CEO: Jerad Anderson, Matthew Staver, Tienshiao Ma
Founded: January 2012
Content it hosts: Films, short films and web series, including 100 Monkeys – Live in Concert and the web series Whole Day Down, starring Sex and the City‘s Willie Garson.
Can any creator use it? Yes.
What the creator gets: 50 percent of the rental price.
What it costs the viewer: Creators set their own pricing, with a minimum price tag of $1.99.
What makes it different? According to Anderson, “We allow any content owner to upload to the site and set a price for rent. We give content owners total control of their content and provide a dashboard for analytics and transparency.”

Any more we should consider adding? Let us know in the comments!

Picture courtesy of Flickr user edenpictures.

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Ansari released his comedy special on his website today, asking fans to pay $5 to instantly stream or download the one-hour show. The offering is powered by VHX, which has until now mostly been focused on social video discovery. Ansari’s special is kicking off VHX’s new artist program, which is meant to help artists to monetize their video assets in a direct-to-fan fashion. So far, things are off to a great start: Wilkinson and his co-founder Casey Pugh told me that they’ve been working non-stop to deal with the heavy demand for the special. “It’s much better than we ever imagined,” said Pugh.

Louis CK pioneered the idea of selling downloads of stand-up specials directly to fans in December, and cutting out gatekeepers like iTunes worked really well for him: CK’s special reportedly brought in more than $1 million within the first 12 days. Making downloads available without any DRM restrictions is key to this kind of approach, believes Wilkinson: “If you treat the consumer like a smart person… people really respond to that.”

Pugh told me that the new artist program is additive to what VHX has been offering in the video discovery space. But there is definitely potential for it to become something bigger: Artists could use eventually use Kickstarter to raise funds for production, and VHX to sell their wares to fans, the duo told me. Of course, others are looking at the space of crowd-funding as well, but they didn’t seem to worried about competition. Said Pugh: “Video is a pretty hard problem to solve.”

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Founded in late 2010, Cull aims to solve the discovery and playback issues that until recently have plagued music video aficionados, and in so doing become a type of MTV for the digital generation. The startup came about after a group of friends found that there was no easy way to setup background music for a holiday party. Faced with the prospect of either spending hours building a video playlist or babysitting a laptop all night, the team began work on a technology solution to the problem.

Now, after a closed beta over the last few months, Cull.tv is finally launching to the public, with a new interface and a mix of editorially curated and dynamically created channels designed to pique the interests of music lovers across a number of genres. The site launches with a number of automatically updated featured channels, including:

• New Music Television: The best new music videos, trending now
• One-Time!: A daily rotation of hip-hop jams and freestyle acrobatics
• Beat Axxis: Synesthetic sounds of electric beat-oriented tomorrow music
• Dead Fingers Talk: Experimental music, left-field sounds, and videos from the unknown
• Audio Bulwark: The latest independent music videos for lovers and fighters
• Dirty Sticky Floors: Wild bohemian dance madness, frenzied and cracked digital missives

There are also a number of fixed playlists from niche programmers, including some from early Cull beta testers who developed interesting collections of music on their own, as well as some from music blogs and publishers like Eclectic Method who connected with the Cull team prior to launch.

In addition to discovery through channels, there’s a social element to Cull; users can connect to social networks and see what their friends are sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Users can also create their own playlists, and share them on those same networks.

Of course, Cull.tv isn’t the only player in this game — there are any number of startups and established players tapping into public APIs of online distributors like YouTube and Vimeo and building discovery engines for online content. VHX, Redux, Shelby.tv and even YouTube Leanback all create continuous streams of videos based on dynamically created or socially curated channels. But Cull is the only one focused specifically on music videos.

Cull.tv is backed by a new startup incubator created by Allan Teruel and Renelito Delos Santos of YC Rejects fame (or perhaps infamy). After being rejected for consideration by Y Combinator, the two made plans to launch their own seed fund, drawing investment from angels and soliciting interest from startups. Now rebranded as Tenacity Worx, the accelerator is making investments in startups, with Cull being the first to be announced.

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New York City-based Shelby.tv has built an easy-to-use, “leanback” experience for discovering new videos. Once you’ve logged in through Twitter or Facebook (or both!), Shelby serves up a continuous stream of videos that have been shared by friends in a full-screen player. The idea is to ease the discovery of new videos by tapping into users’ social graph. Users can then “like” or share those videos out to their own followers on those social networks.

It’s not an original idea, and in fact, there are many startups seeking to enable the same sort of social discovery of new videos. VHX, Showyou, and Boxee all enable similar functionality, either through Web-based browser experiences or mobile apps. But Shelby.tv might have an early advantage over all its competitors, with some content that no one else has yet.

So far, most social discovery apps only include content from aggregators like YouTube and Vimeo, which have open APIs for discovering and distributing their videos. That has kept them from being able to surface clips and full-length videos from major TV shows, which would involve working with Hulu or network site owners to make those shows available.

Even though it’s still in alpha, Shelby.tv is getting a major boost by making Hulu videos available through its recommendation system. According to founder Reece Pacheco, Shelby.tv worked directly with Hulu for several months to make the integration happen. But with that hard work comes a huge pay-off.

“It’s nice to see Daily Show clips show up in Shelby,” Pacheco said.

This isn’t the first social integration that Hulu has worked on. Earlier this summer, it integrated with Facebook to enable its users to easily share clips and moments within videos with their friends. For Hulu, leveraging social networks is one way to spread word-of-mouth for its shows and increase viewership.

Hulu isn’t the only new content that Shelby.tv has recently made available — videos from IAC’s College Humor also now will be discoverable through its social recommendation engine. And Shelby.tv has also hooked into Tumblr to surface videos that are shared on that network with its users.

Shelby.tv is still in an alpha testing, but if you’re interested in checking it out, you can go to its website and enter your email address to sign up for an invite.

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