June 15, 2007

Babelgum TV, New Distribution Channel for Quality Dance Videos

Babelgum is another contender in the battle to deliver full-screen, streaming video over the Internet. I've written previously about Joost, which offers a similar service.

Babelgum, which is now in open beta, uses peer-to-peer technology to deliver video to its users. My initial experience was good. Streaming video worked smoothly without hiccups. And the required free video player download for Windows PCs was more or less easy to use once I experimented with the control buttons for a few minutes. I don't believe a Mac version is available at this time. (You do not have to have a beta account to download the video player).

In this post I will give an overview of Babelgum with a focus on its currently small dance offerings. Then I will explain why I think that the Babelgum offering is of particular value to dancers and dance companies that are seeking new ways to generate online revenue for their videos.

Babelgum Video and Dance

Once you launch the Babelgum video player, you can choose content from different channels or search for specific types of video programming. I did a search for dance and found a small number of ballet and bellydance instruction videos along with flamenco dancing.

Here's a screen shot of the New York City Ballet Workout program. Click on the following image to see a larger image and the screen controls for this video application:

As you'll see in above image, whether you are viewing in a window or full-screen mode, there are video controls for jumping from one video to the next, pausing, viewing the channel guide and searching for videos. You cannot fast forward or backwards while watching a movie clip.

I also came across flamenco dance with Joaquin Cortes (click for larger images):

And belly dance with Jillina:

To learn more about the Babelgum technology, you can view a comprehensive introduction on WebTVWire: "BabelGum | Internet TV Start-Up to Contend With Joost." This post included the following video, which I found informative. You have to watch some non-related introductory material and then a representative from Babelgum talks about this new video offering and the peer-to-peer technology that supports it:

Babelgum Seeks Independent Video Producers and Distributors

What differentiates Babelgum from Joost is the type of video programming each company is looking to line-up for their streaming video offerings. While Joost is signing-up branded video content from the largest and best known TV, cable and documentary producers, Babelgum is seeking out independent video producers and distributors. The new Babelgum market is thus potentially of much greater interest to dance companies, dancers, dance instructors, dance-on-camera producers and others in this market segment. Unlike sites like YouTube that focus largely on user-generated, amateur content, Babelgum wants professional quality videos that serve many different niche audiences including dance. Although at this point, the only way to find dance videos on Babelgum is through its search engine. I couldn't find "dance" videos by browsing the channel directory - maybe this will change once there are more dance videos.

To learn more about the types of videos that Babelgum is seeking and their revenue model, you can visit their "Content Owners" section.

At this point, Babelgum says that for its initial testing it will pay video producers US$5 for each 1,000 unique views of a video. That would be $50 for 10k views, $500 for 100k views and $5,000 for 1 million views. As Anaheim Ballet has shown with its videos on YouTube, getting a million views is not out of the range of possibilities. Once Babelgum's advertising program is fully operational, video producers will receive 50% of advertising revenue connected with each of their videos.

Assuming that Babelgum is successful moving forward, an unanswered question is how dance videos would be distributed via Babelgum. Would dance companies upload their videos directly or would dance companies and other dancers work in conjunction with video producers and distributors?

For another comparison of Babelgum and Joost, you can read this TechCrunch post.

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