The YouTube effect

YouTube.com. Two years ago it was starting to take its first baby steps. Now YouTube is owned by Google and has partnerships with many other corporations such as CBS, BBC, Universal, Sony, Warner, NBA, and more. YouTube allows people to easily view and share video content on the internet. Because of this, the dance world has expanded into many different areas on the internet.

YouTube's effect on dance is similar to the introduction of digital music file sharing sites and how it changed the music industry. As most people know, once Napster and Limewire released onto the internet, it made piracy a lot easier than ever before, which very negatively affected the music industry because people were purchasing less CDs and instead opting to download particular tracks they wanted on the internet.

This is similar to what is happening to the dance industry because people can choose to not consume the product by buying tickets to a show or tuning in to one of the new dance TV shows. They can opt to watch the content later on the internet, free of charge, without leaving their home. This hurts the dance world because its already a community that's starving for more exposure, a wider audience, and a larger reach into more people's lives. In addition, YouTube has somewhat enabled dancers to steal choreography they found on the internet and claim it as their own or use it without the choreographer's consent. YouTube videos have made it difficult for choreographers to protect their projects.

However, just as the music industry evolved with the rise of products like iTunes that allowed people to legally purchase digital music, dancers are finding ways to use YouTube as a promotion tool and one that ultimately drives revenue instead of limits it. Within YouTube itself many artists are able to promote themselves and the projects they are involved in. For example, the hit show So You Think You Can Dance has endless videos up on YouTube that promote the choreographers, dancers, and the show in general. Here's an example of how YouTube has been used to promote dance shows like SYTYCD: 

The interesting thing about YouTube is not that it's a website that dancers can use to post and view videos, allowing them to share their work, learn new techniques, and get inspiration for different styles. YouTube is amazing because of how embedded it already is into dance company sites and dancers' personal promotion sites. For example, communityclass.com is a site that promotes a series of master classes dancers can take, presented by boogiezone.com, which is an online dance community. Instead of being limited to posting resumes and bios of the teacher's works, communityclass.com embeds YouTube videos of previous master classes to drive interest and attendance for the next class series. Here's a quick view of the page layout:

You can see how offering videos sparks interest in potential customers and allows those people to see what to expect at a master class so they are more comfortable with their purchase.

Overall, the presence of YouTube on the web has allowed the dance industry the same freedoms as many other entertainment art forms that can make their work available outside of a physical performance venue. Movies and DVDs can bring cinema into home theaters, iTunes and CDs can bring a rock concert into one's living room, and now YouTube.com and YouTube integrated sites can bring dance performance into one's every day life.