Founded by director Jon M. Chu and producer Hieu Ho, DS2DIO (pronounced “D-Studio”) brings together a wide array of dance-oriented content, from the b-boy competition series The Arena to dancing showcase S2DIO CITY.

Chu, whose work includes the second and third Step Up movies as well as the upcoming G.I. Joe: Retaliation, is also an established web creator, already had a close relationship with YouTube, dating back to his 2008 dance battles with Miley Cyrus.

“When they wanted to look for high production quality content, we got the phone call,” Chu said via phone. “We were kind of hesitant, trying to figure out what YouTube wanted — because there was no dedicated dance channel, but there are a ton of dancers on YouTube. We had to be sure that if we were going to do this, we had to lead it — show that high-quality dance content can exist online.”

Also included in the channel is Chu’s scripted series The LXD: League of Extraordinary Dancers, which premiered originally on Hulu in the US, but is now un-geo-blocked for the first time.

And plans for more scripted content are in the works, including a Step Up-esque drama with the working title of The Floor. Another unscripted series, Dance Fantasy, will bring the “dance fantasies” of celebrities to life — both series are in development for Spring 2013.

And the DS2DIO team is also focusing on new types of engagement: For example, the series Master Class teaches new moves and routines — which aspiring dancers can film themselves attempting, then submit the videos to the original choreographers for direct critique. “We’re trying to utilize all these tools to create this unique experience for the audience,” Ho said

As the channel is relatively new, the most-viewed videos on the channel are currently promotional content like the original DS2DIO trailer or a short featuring Justin Bieber. However, the series Remixed, which brings an established dancer and musical artist together to collaborate on an original piece, has established solid five-to-six figure viewcounts. “Seeing two artists come together and create something has been really fun to watch — because we haven’t seen that kind of profile before,” Chu said.

Remixed, at over 10 minutes an episode, is a bit longer than other shows on DS2DIO, as the issue of video length is far from resolved — especially depending on the platform. Chu brought up The LXD as an example, which before its 2010 premiere on Hulu was originally planned as a YouTube series.

Accordingly, the aim was for episodes to be no longer than three minutes — when they made the move to Hulu, though, they had to dramatically increase the length of episodes. “There’s a whole different culture for people watching Hulu videos. People were annoyed by watching a two minute ad for a five minute video”, he recalled.

Having returned to YouTube, though, Chu and the DS2DIO team are still figuring out the sweet spot. “I still think YouTube is meant for shorter length [content], but every few months we can get a little longer,” Chu said. “Right now, I think we’re in a five or six minute world — and that’s inching up every several months.

“Coming back to YouTube is a really interesting experiment because YouTube is also trying to change what people think. That’s what the whole initiative’s about — expanding the identity of what content on YouTube is,” Chu added.

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The Fine Brothers have a long-established reputation for trying new things with web content, from experimenting with interactive YouTube games to creating a whole fake social network to support a series about social media profiles. And this year, they’re using YouTube’s money to create not just a show, but a fully immersive social media experience — as well as not one but three show-within-a-shows.

The premise of MyMusic is relatively simple: The primary series, an Office-esque sitcom, charts the wacky antics of a transmedia production company focused on music, shot in semi-regular blocks.

On top of that, though, there are three side series being produced every week: The Mosh, an interactive Q&A series, music news show MyMusic News, and a live variety show featuring comedians and musicians (past guests include The Jezebels and Rhett and Link).

Each show is hosted by at least one of the show’s characters, who also have vibrant social media profiles across a minimum of three social networks — each. Between Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr and Twitter, that’s a total of 25 profiles, each being updated multiple times daily. According to co-creator Benny Fine via IM, there are over 40,000 people following the characters and the company on services outside of YouTube.

Making it happen, said Fine, are 11 full-time staffers “wearing many hats,” including two full-time writers whose duties include the social media element.

“To do this ambitious project with three weekly shows you need manpower, and it’s still not enough,” Fine added. To accomodate the demanding production schedule, the Brothers have had to scale back on their other series, including Kids React and Spoilers.

The cast includes a mix of TV-born and web-born talent, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer villain Adam Busch and My Damn Channel It Girl Grace Helbig. “We really wanted a mix of more traditional TV actors to mix in with YouTube talent, continually wanting to show talent is talent no matter where it originates,” Fine said.

Along the theme of mixing TV and web styles: The comedy component of MyMusic is released as short-form episodes every Sunday. But then, once every seven weeks, the preceding episodes will be cut together as a TV sitcom-length catch-up episode — certain scenes will even be reshot to make sure that the catch-up episode works as a seamless experience.

Thus, by the end of MyMusic‘s 49-week first season, the team will have created a six-episode season of a TV series, “written in a way to have the content fully work as a web series or a sitcom,” Fine said. “We’re the only one in [the Made For Web] initiative, to our knowledge, making a full-on sitcom.”

Since the show’s launch a month ago, the MyMusic channel has racked up over 2.2 million views across all its various series. Is that enough to be considered a success? The Fine Brothers are torn. According to Rafi Fine, “Views are one thing, but who’s to say what number makes advertisers come on board, make YouTube happy and make a sustainable business to keep the show going?”

But for Benny, “Having 100,000 views an episode or more, all year long, for a scripted show online is not something that’s really been done. And being able to see the tens of thousands that are so engaged with this world — that’s success to me as an artist.”

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Prior to Watson’s presentation, the last viewership milestone was announced in May as YouTube celebrated its sixth birthday. At that point, the site was delivering 3 billion views per day — so it’s added about 500 million views a day in the past six months. A year earlier, in May 2010, YouTube broke 2 billion views a day.

The increase in videos served comes as YouTube is capturing more eyeballs around the world. It now has more than 800 million unique viewers per month, and more than half its views come from non-English speakers.

Already, some of the site’s top producers have audiences that rival some cable networks. That’s important, as YouTube plans to introduce more of its own content, by launching 100 original channels to provide an alternative to traditional broadcast and cable TV content.

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