November 29, 2005

Part IV of IV: Building a Profitable Dance Economy

(This post consists of 4 parts: This is part IV. Link to previous sections: Part I, Part II and Part III)

5) Copyright Challenges and Licensing

While I’m recommending that large numbers of choreographers and dancers copyright their works, the result of having so many dance pieces legally protected could lead to many intellectual property challenges unless important issues are dealt with upfront.

If the dance community followed the path I’ve recommended above, these are some of the questions that would probably have to be resolved early in the process:

- Can the US Copyright office be convinced to require that all dance works be submitted in the UDNL?

- What types of dance works and choreography can or should be copyrighted?

- Who should be the copyright holder? A dancer, all the dancers, the choreographer or others? Will different copyright application submissions tend to give certain parties copyright interests? If a choreographer submits just a dance score, then the choreographer gets the copyright. But if a video of a dance piece is submitted, what are the rights of the individual dancers with respect to their participation, their movements, their bodies and their silhouettes? What I’m getting at is do dancers get a cut of a dance piece that ends-up being licensed for commercial purposes?

- If full dance scores along with complete videos and pictures are submitted, which parties have access to this content? Is this data available in part or in whole to the public? (Probably not and this issue is sure to be problematic). Are people required to have permission from the copyright holder before viewing or gaining access to more than just a preliminary portion?

- For what purposes can this digital data (scores, videos, pictures) be used?

On the positive side, there will be many new opportunities for choreographers and dancers to license their work and generate new revenue streams:

- As thousands of dancers start filing copyrights for their dance works, it is likely that new licensing bureaus will be launched similar to ASCAP and BMI in the music industry. These licensing bureaus for dance will manage the process of licensing dance works to commercial and not-for-profit entities ranging from a choreographer who wants to restage a work to a TV production company that is about to film a commercial.

- A series of new legal documents will need to be created that offer a recommended approach to how dance works should be licensed, what the rights of the participating parties should be, and how licensors and licensees might go about calculating a price structure for the agreement.

- There will be a host of issues that relate to rights management and ensuring that dance works are not used in unacceptable manners. There will be clear challenges when it comes to controlling how digital content such as videos and pictures should and can be used. These are similar issues to what the music and film industry have faced and continue to face. Hopefully the successes and failures of the music and film industry will provide a helpful roadmap on how to address these challenges.

6) A New Marketplace and New Revenue Opportunities

Now that large numbers of dance pieces are notated and protected within a rights management system that ensures that choreographers and dancers get paid when their works are licensed, used and distributed, we can consider how dancemakers will make money.

Since there will be thousands of documented dance pieces in digital format, entrepreneurs will begin to recognize the size and scope of the dance industry.

These businesspeople will start to ask some intriguing questions:

- What if I created a dance portal where users could purchase dance performance videos for any style of dance and transfer these video files to their handheld devices? Dancers and/or choreographers would receive a royalty for each sale.

- What if I created an online dance distribution network that enabled website publishers to choose which dance videos (performances, social dancing or educational video) to run on their websites. This network would insert commercials and split ad revenue with the dancers and/or choreographers.

- What if I created a website that sold a large selection of dance on film videos that could be purchased in DVD format or were available for download? Once again, dancers/choreographers/producers get a cut of every transaction. And since the entire video footage for each dance on camera video was already digitized, the owner of this website could press DVDs as needed and avoid paying for inventory.

These are just a handful of questions – the list could go on and on. Here are additional websites that will be created primarily as a result of the existence of a large inventory of notated and protected dance works:

- Dance licensing organizations create their own search engines to allow users to search for works they wish to license.

- A virtual audition website is created that enables show producers, academic institutions, dance companies and others to preview performances by specific dancers.

- Game developers search a website to identify dancers for inclusion in an upcoming high definition, multi-player computer game that features tap dancers.

- Academics, researchers and librarians search specialized online database by dance styles, dance movement, period of work, and other very detailed criteria for purposes of re-staging or research projects.

- Choreographers and artistic directors search a database of all performances of a specific work before starting their own rehearsal of this dance piece.

- A website is created that allows dancers and choreographers to purchase complete dance sheet notations so that they can stage their own performance of the dance piece.

- People who participate in virtual worlds (this is a large and growing marketplace) can purchase/license an animated version of a dance performance so that this performance can take place at, say, a digital resort within the virtual landscape. Since most dance pieces will be captured by motion tracking systems, it is not difficult to convert the digitized 3D wireframe version of the performance into an animated show.

- Friends and families that want to learn how to dance at home or evaluate a dance instructor that teaches at a nearby studio can search a database of instructors who teach different styles of dance and then watch video clips of each instructor. Then the instructor can be booked online for a remote Internet-based dance instruction class via two-way videoconferencing.

- Producers of TV/Web ads and product placements can search a database to find dancers to include in these ads and shows.

- A website publisher can build a site that features a calendar of local dance events and classes. Visitors to the site can preview videos of performances and classes.

- Event and meeting planners can search for and evaluate dancers for showcases and dance classes at corporate and association meetings, conferences and tradeshows.

Conclusion

The dance community (dancers, choreographers, artistic directors, dance associations, teachers, researchers, writers, producers, and anybody else involved in the dance world) can increase the size of the dance marketplace by millions of dollars – possibly tens or hundreds of millions – by pursuing the gameplan described in this article.

The reason why this gameplan will work is because today there is no dance marketplace for the selling and buying of dance works and derivative products and services. My gameplan solves this lack of a commercial marketplance and in the process will increase revenue opportunities for everybody involved in dance.

(This post consists of 4 parts: This is part IV. Link to previous sections: Part I, Part II and Part III)

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