The Next Web

Alternative film site Raindance.tv raises € 600.000

Written on July 21, 2008 – 12:45 pm
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor

Good news for alternative movie fanatics out there, Raindance Festival has launched raindance.tv earlier this year and reports that they secured about € 600.000 ($1 million) to accelerate their online operations. The website also signed distribution deals with 8 partners to facilitate the movies to the public.

For those in the blue: Raindance is a well known and (16-year) old film festival for movie outsiders, indies and movie rejects. The festival has hosted an impressive list of guests and filmmakers, including: Christopher Nolan (Memento, Batman Begins), Shane Meadows (Dead Man’s Shoes, This Is England), Ken Loach (Kes, Ae Fond Kiss), Marky Ramone (The Ramones), Iggy Pop, Andrea Arnold (Red Road), Quentin Tarantino, and Lou Reed.

10 months after launch, Raindance.tv is filled with indie short and features films. The low-budget film distributor signed with partners to provide the content, including Daily Motion, Vuze and Joost to provide the content. The video platform license and pay filmmakers royalties from any revenues earned, be it through advertising or pay per view. Elliot Grove, founder of the Raindance Film Festival and the British Independent Film Awards, will act as a senior consultant to the company.

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dailymotion, joost, movie, raindance.tv, Vuze

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What is on tonight? Not Joost.com

Written on January 9, 2008 – 9:00 am
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web

Michael Volpi must either have a great plan for innovation this year, or he must be feeling like the walls are closing in.

Joost started the race for Internet TV way before everyone else with a product unlike any other, with the promise of unprecedented flexibility on targeted ads so the advertisers would get the best bang for their buck.

However it seems like way too many people have jumped on the Internet TV space, with many different and innovative approaches.

During the last weeks, I’ve started noticing how some big players are merging with Hulu.com’s embeddable content and how some of them are trying to get into your living room.

Last year I told David Clark, North American VP of Joost at the NY Video Meetup that many people have said that Joost should create a Set-Top Box device, or to partner up with a TV manufacturer and get Joost on the TV, but probably one of the things they’ve not thought about is to port Joost into an Xbox Live downloadable application and make a deal with Microsoft. Of course this was in front of hundreds of people and he just gave me a politically correct answer and went on.

If I could have a chance to talk to Michael Volpi, I’d suggest a couple of crazy ideas, which have been implemented during the past week by no other than Microsoft, Veoh.com, and the Big G. (more…)

Deadpool, gubatron, hulu, joost, Michael Volpi, Microsoft, xbox, youtube

8 Comments »