April 19, 2007

New International Dance Association Needed

Mashable reported yesterday that YouTube may be on the verge of offering an advertising revenue-split with video producers.

This development means that dancers will soon be able to monetize their videos on YouTube. Plus, many other video sharing sites have or will be rolling out similar revenue-generating opportunities for video producers. (To explore the financial opportunities offered by different video sites, link to these sites from my video directory that I posted on Monday).

While there are an increasing number of ways that dancers can begin to create new online revenue streams, there are a few hurdles that will have to be dealt with:

1) There are a lot of unauthorized dance videos on the Internet.
Individuals either copy dance clips from DVDs or TV shows, or they record live dance performances and upload the footage to video sharing sites without permission. Dancers and dance companies need an industry-wide, global initiative to combat these pirated videos.

2) As dancers seek ways to generate online revenue, the ownership rights of composers and musicians have to be properly taken into consideration. I need to learn a lot more about how music is licensed for the purpose of online distribution via digital videos. But from what I do know, it appears that the requirements of the major music licensing organizations (BMI and ASCAP) is excessive and onerous. A better method needs to be created so that dancers have access to a wide range of music under licensing payment plans that make economic sense to dancers and provide appropriate compensation to composers and musicians.

3) As what I'll call the parallel economic universe of the Internet expands revenue and business opportunities, dancers from around the world will want to collaborate and exchange ideas on how to develop and
implement new Internet-focused business models. By "parallel economic universe," I mean that the Internet offers a completely new distribution eco-system for dancers that is significantly different from focusing on selling tickets for seats in a theater. Actually, the Internet will be a more lucrative platform for many dancers in the long run. Take the Anaheim Ballet video that was watched 750,000 on YouTube. Let's say for this illustration that this video was watched by 75,000 real people and each viewing could be monetized. I don't know how many people see the Anaheim Ballet perform every year, but I don't think it's close to these YouTube numbers. The bottom-line is that there's some real untapped financial opportunities here.

My proposal

A new Internet-based membership organization is created for dancers around the world - part-time and full time, professional and amateur -
representing all forms and styles of dance. A low annual membership fee is charged for joining this organization - $25 or $50 maybe.

The first thing that this organization would do is create an authorized-dance-video logo program. This logo program would be like a seal of approval and would be placed at the beginning of the online dance videos of all members. This way that Internet audience as well as video sharing sites would know that the dance video they are watching is an authorized dance video and was not created illegally.

Second, this organization would have a publicly-accessible database of all members and all member videos so that anybody could verify the authenticity of any and all dance videos.

Third, this association would promote the authorized-dance-video logo program on a large scale so that online dance audiences (and everybody else for that matter) was aware of the importance of only watching and purchasing authorized videos.

Fourth, this group would serve the role of a watchdog and insist that unauthorized dance videos are removed from the Internet.

Fifth, on a different front, as membership grew, this organization would do research on and formulate a game plan on streamlining and improving how music is licensed and paid for for the purpose of online distribution in dance videos. As I wrote above, these licensing issues have to be dealt with head-on. Plus, there is power in numbers. If large numbers of dancers join this organization, then the dance community is in a much better position to create favorable licensing options (and explore non-traditional approaches) for dancers while still ensuring that composers and musicians are fairly compensated.

Sixth, as I wrote above, there is a need for dancers around the world to be able to share their Internet successes and experiments with others. This association would set-up online community forums and other related initiatives. Plus, members could use many different online tools to create their own local groups in cities around the world.

Seventh, this organization would leverage the Internet to implement grass-roots campaigns to help promote all forms of dance while building larger audiences, more customers and simply encouraging everybody to dance.

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