I think it's a nice idea.

Goose and gander
 

I won't split hairs with you, but I think they are doing something publicly as a pair here: Dernier morceau enregistré !. I'm assuming that is Jérémy on the right - I've virtually never seen his photo. As best I know, you are certainly correct that, to date, he does not shadow Alizée when she does publicity.

Then why did I include the J-man? Well, I know La Methode Cauet played for laughs, but I think A was being sincere when she visited the show and stated that it was impossible for J to take a meal alone with a female friend. That's why I stipulated the videoconference include J: goose and gander parity; no salacious undertone.

And I think it would creep out fans, even the adolescent boys with raging hormones, to even fantasize A doing a raunchy JenniCam act or something. Not that hell wouldn't freeze over a MILLION times first, thank you. Perhaps people who aspire for something else might hope that Britney's career pops a couple more rivets?

Alizée has grown up and married. Maybe eight years ago, her Mom might have joined Alizée for lucky-winner-fan lunchtiime videoconferencing. Or her Dad or grandma. On the other hand, perhaps Tahiti Boy and a couple more of the Palmtree Family could take J's place now if he is an unwanted distraction to fans, in the estimation of the Chaterlains ( ;P ). But I think you have to give fans something more intimate than a Fun TV SMS prompt and the chance they might get a single-Q&A audio link to get them to really invest in the sponsorship lottery I suggest.

Edit:

Excellent point, Deep. In fact, that is EXACTLY the tacit assumption which underlies the potential need for the lottery scheme. Wal-Mart, selling music on CDs, USED to be the biggest music retailer in the US. NOW the biggest music retailer is Apple iTunes, which delivers only digital files. By the way, while there was rampant clandestine digitally-mediated book piracy by the dawn of the century, music got all the public attention and went legitimately media-free long before legitimate e-book use achieved traction.

Increasingly many clueless lay people are becoming aware at this late date that files can be copied for free. Copy protection fails if you - or anyone you know or can meet, if only on the Internet - has the minimal skills required to redigitize the analog audio feed. Roughly speaking, there is now about one digital audio player (most of them iPods) per household in the US. And US cellphones are bundling in this capability fast, too. Most in Korea did so long ago.

You might learn more by reading something like End of the world as Hollywood knows it.

Supposedly, Alizée "Toc de Macintosh" Jacotey herself said

Mp3 players are not at the source of piracy, it's the price of progress and the Internet... we can't do anything about it, we made a lot of laws, it was a battle lost before it begun, unless we go back to vinyl records. I think we should prepare for the death of the CD...

We hear you, princess, and are struggling to brainstorm plan B!

sry
 

sorry to kill your idea but Jeremy won't and its not like you know Alizee so you prob couldnt get her to since her fan mail list is still probably stacked for a couple of years....

You would! I looked you up and discovered you had a mental dry run at it in 2006, more or less:
A Day With Alizee Sweepstakes

Definitely not. I believe that's one of the musicians she's working with on the new album, although I'm not sure which one.

Well, I thought you were talking about a conversation on skype over lunch, not a romantic evening on the Riviera by moonlight or a cruise through the Caribbean. (Although if you were to offer something like THAT as the prize . . . :D but she'd never go along with it.)

Bear in mind that anything she does with fans is going to be in full public view with photographers and the whole nine yards, so there's no possibility of getting up to mischief. If Jérémy is going to get jealous about something like that, he's being ridiculous. Of course, maybe he IS ridiculous, what do I know :p . . .

In any case, I'm quite certain that he would not participate in any fan activities for Alizée. That would be totally out of pattern for both of them.

I hear what you say about "something intimate," but there's intimate and then there's intimate. I mentioned the chat session that she had in 2008. In that session, fans who won a drawing or some such got to chat with her over IM for a time. That's not unlike what you were talking about, except that no money changed hands. (Incidentally, in that chat session it became very clear that she follows her fan site forums, because she knew all about the people she was chatting with.) And Jérémy did not participate in that, either.

So don't worry about it; the only thing along those lines that could threaten their marriage would have to happen in private without tout le monde looking on, and that's not what you're proposing.

I understand what you're saying about copy protection not working, but in the end it comes down to the fact that the great majority of people are trustworthy about such things. There will be piracy, sure, but as long as artistic work (music, books, whatever) is offered at a low price and easily, most people won't avail themselves of the opportunity for theft. People will buy her new album, not just steal it, I think we can be confident of that, especially if they can buy it digitally. So I believe that your idea is actually better as a promotion than as a money-raiser.

Legitimate sales in an age of easy piracy
 

I think Apple iTunes and NetFlix demonstrate what you say has some validity, at least for now. However, ponder this:

In 1999 consumers spent $39 billion on music, mostly CDs.
Today it's a $17.6 billion industry and CDs are clearly on the way out.

And don't you find many responses I got at Would you pay to watch an Alizée video on Youtube? discouraging?

I like the idea, but I feel there are a good amount of unknowns. Of course, with research, those unknowns can be taken care of. So if you can get them taken care of, I think it'd be pretty cool. =]]

No, I don't. What I saw was that people were confused, and understandably so. There are a lot of Alizée vids on YouTube already, most of them fan-produced and of amateur quality. When you ask, "would you pay to watch an Alizée video on YouTube?" naturally people think of the kind of videos that are already on YouTube. Would I pay to watch one of those? Hell, no! But how about a longer, professionally-produced video like a mini-concert, high quality, Alizée at her best? Yes. And I think most people would. The thread didn't make that clear.

As for the stats on music, remember that's gross revenues. CDs cost more than downloads and should, since they involve production costs where downloads don't. Are people buying less music today than in the past? They're certainly not listening to less. Book prices are dropping, too, thanks to e-books. Gross price for my novel is $4.95, where in print when that happens it will cost $14.90. But I get almost the same royalty regardless of which version someone buys. Same rule should apply for music, and if it doesn't yet, that's only because the record companies still have a stranglehold, something that I expect them to lose. I think record companies are probably on the way out just like publishing houses.

I published a blog entry yesterday on this very subject, called The Decline and Fall of the Gatekeepers. Might be worth checking out, if you don't mind reading something long.

The business model for book publishing is in many ways quite different from the music publishing model. (I wish it were the same.) First of all, recording an album can be quite expensive. Producing one music video at the level of production the public is accustomed to is also quite expensive. And I’m not including the cost of producing the physical CD. There is no equivalent to these costs in e-book publishing as far as I can see.

There was a time when a record company was founded and/or run by people who knew and loved music. They actually performed a useful function as gatekeepers back then, at least to some extent. They were better at finding artists with raw talent that could be nurtured into producing good music. For example, look at the role George Martin played in the career of the Beatles. Of course a few multinational corporations have since bought up most of these record companies. They are powerful and the laws are skewed on their behalf. It will be hard to break their stranglehold on the business.

If each artist is forced to “go it alone”, it will be hard for them to fund projects to the level we currently expect. Even Alizée may have trouble affording all of it, and keep in mind the money she has came from the current system. How would new artists with no money fit into this new model? No new business model will be successful if it doesn’t sustain music on into the future and allow for new “Alizée’s” to be discovered and developed. As much as I dislike the current model, I would hate to see music devolve into a lot of poorly made recordings and video because of a lack of professional funding and artistic support.

Maybe the answer is a new music business entity, like a musician’s co-op, so to speak, that could exist under the umbrella of labels like Institubes. Musicians could pay a percentage of their profits in dues and this money could be leveraged to fund projects. Maybe they could also get their fans to subscribe for a few bucks a month, as well as raise money from wealthy private, corporate, and governmental benefactors who are interested in music.

If we want to see the level of production quality we are accustomed to, and if we want to see the current corporate structure out of the mix, there needs to be a way to fund these artists’ projects in any new model of doing business.