DanceTrippin TV, the music channel for the fans of dance music and clubbing culture, plans to launch in further international markets this year including Germany, the UK and France, founder and managing director Will Johnston told Broadband TV News.
Carriage negotiations are underway with a major platform operator in Germany with distribution to commence “pretty soon”, said Johnston. The Amsterdam-based broadcaster recently launched at VipNet in Croatia and on regional networks in Spain.
Further international targets on the agenda include the UK, France, Greece, Eastern Europe and India, said Johnston. “There’s also lots of interest in our channel in Latin America and Asia.” Local distribution agents have been appointed to work out carriage deals.
DanceTrippin TV emerged out of a production company specialising in recordings of live DJ sessions at festivals, clubs and parties which Johnston founded in 2000. The TV market was entered in 2003 when the company started broadcasting its footage during the night-time hours of local Ibiza TV channel TEF. This soon became popular among bars and cafés on the island who aired it on screens at their locations.
“This showed us how well it works,” said Johnston. “There has been no quality coverage of live DJ sets on mainstream television, but a huge dance music fan base.” The strongly growing numbers of video recordings from events uploaded by private people on YouTube further illustrated the strong demand.
DanceTrippin TV launched as a 24 hour linear TV channel in 2012 on Eutelsat’s Eurobird satellite at 9° East and on UPC’s cable network in the Netherlands where it is meanwhile also available on Ziggo. “It has always been our intention to offer the channel internationally as music has no boundaries,” said Johnston.
Currently, DanceTrippin TV provides a single international feed for all markets which is distributed as a pay-TV service by domestic platform operators. Localised versions are planned for a later stage, in particular for markets in which the channel plans to launch as a free-to-air service such as the UK and France, according to Johnston. DanceTrippin TV is also available through TV apps on Amazon Fire TV, Roku TV and the Opera TV Store.
90% of the channel’s schedule consists of nonstop recordings of live DJ sets from festivals, clubs, discotheques and other party venues. DanceTrippin TV has already produced more than 400 videos, for example covering the performance of Carl Cox at the Space Opening Party in Ibiza or Solomun & H.O.S.H. at the Diynamic Festival in Amsterdam. The channel also shows behind-the-scenes reports, interviews and documentaries.
In the long run, DanceTrippin TV considers setting up sister channels focusing on genres such as commercial music or underground clubbing sounds for platform providers offering space for more than the main channel, said Johnston. Future plans also include the addition of a personalisation feature to the TV apps enabling viewers to customise the music lineup to their individual taste.
