DanceJam: Hit or Miss?

This website launched a bit under the radar, and hasn’t really affected our community yet, but check out DanceJam.com. It’s a blend of dancetag.tv (Myron) and boogiezone.com (Elm & Dave) mashed into a website that also has ties in with some larger music artists. The website was founded by MC Hammer (wait, he’s still doing this type of stuff????) and Flock’s Geoffrey Arone and Anthony Young. They’ve gone through two rounds of funding and raised $4.5million dollars so far to build out this web application and grow the company a bit (I’d like to see that kind of cash here some day!).

What’s interesting is the fact that they have partnered up with Janet Jackson to host online auditions in a way. Gil Duldulao is looking for singers and dancers when they submit their videos online. I’m pretty sure it’s the latter, and I’m not sure if it’s 100% guaranteed that if you submit, they will pick any performer from the site.

There is one cool aspect though, and that’s the tournament feature. It’s almost like ABDC on a short-term scale, but you can do it for choreography, dancing vid, etc. Would be really cool to check out.

Whether something like this is truly going to affect our dance scene is unknown, and whether it will garner the type of traffic and support that Boogiezone.com has been getting is still up in the air. $4.5million is a lot for angel funds, and will need to see a much broader audience / traffic in order to gain any money. The ad model isn’t going to cut it, so they might be trying to sneak some ecommerce up in there soon. They do however have a nice design

My money is on Boogiezone.com, perhaps there is a merger that may happen down the line (technology for traffic)?