The Tommy Boy and Strictly Rhythm music labels are taking a spin with Internet Music Corp. to build a new dance portal.
The Internet Music Corp., parent company of AKA.com — a hip-hop portal — plans to launch AKA.dance. After that, with Mega Communications, a Hispanic radio broadcasting outfit, it will develop AKA.latin.
“Dance music is a genre that’s so big but so overlooked by the media — by MTV and radio stations,” said Tom Silverman, chairman of Tommy Boy.
Silverman sees an opportunity to give fans information about music they may have heard at a club the night before.
Randy Weiner and Stuart Hersch, co-founders of Internet Music Corp., launched AKA.com in September. Since then, the hip-hop portal has grown to 3 million visitors a month.
AKA.com has also signed a deal with Warner Brothers Television to create Websites for its urban programming, including “Russell Simmons Oneworld Music Beat.”
Tommy Boy’s Silverman and Strictly Rhythm head Mark Finkelstein are “personally invested, but they’ll bring their companies into it,” said Weiner, who wanted the support of multiple labels so the industry would understand the sites are about the entire genre, not just one label’s acts.
Mega Communications will allow aka.latin to tap into music resources from its 20 Hispanic radio stations.
Weiner, a co-founder of the Internet firm Reset, expects to build reggae, rock, and R&B portals, as well. This week he even fielded a phone call from someone who wanted to build a Celtic site.
Silverman blamed the days of disco and the subsequent backlash against it for dance music’s demise on radio. “It’s an underground format but everyone’s online,” he said.