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.”

This week, that involves Microsoft’s Xbox Live, with an app on the videogame console launching today that will offer up 1,000 films to stream.

To watch the films, individuals will need both an IndieFlix and Xbox Live membership.

More viewers means more money for filmmakers putting their pics on the service.

IndieFlix shares revenues it receives through what it calls a “Royalty Pool Minutes” model in which filmmakers get paid for every minute watched by a subscriber.

“The sheer size of the Xbox market catapults indies into the limelight,” said filmmaker and IndieFlix CEO and co-founder Scilla Andreen.

There are now 46 million subscribers who pay $60 a year to access video and other content on Xbox Live. Xbox users watched and played 18 billion hours of entertainment last year, Microsoft said, with usage of apps on the console growing 57% in 2012.

That’s certainly a lot of digital coin should IndieFlix be able to entice Xbox Live’s users to steer away from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon—and their games, of course.

The Xbox Live deal will actually make IndieFlix’s short and full-length features, documentaries and web series available in six countries: the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. It also has a similar streaming deal with Roku.

“We think the Xbox audience ‘gets’ independent film,” Andreen said. “We believe they’ll love the original content and appreciate the raw creativity of these fiercely independent artists who work outside of the ‘system’ to make the movies they want to make – no need for permission or bowing to someone else’s editorial control.”