Quote:
Originally Posted by Scruffydog777
One of the reasons I'm doing
this in addition to loving her music is I believe she is a singer who
has suffered a large financial loss due to outlets like Youtube.
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YouTube per se is no longer as big a headache for music proprietors as are other less open venues for illicitly trading copies of copyrighted artworks, e.g. file archives whose contents are indexed off-site. Music proprietors came down hard on YouTube right away and an accommodation is emerging, in which copyrighted material is being flagged at once, and then either deleted or supported by advertising, whose revenue is split. If you have a minute, you can read about this at:
YouTube's emerging business model for copyright-infringed content
You may have even noticed that when you access YouTube, now you are often redirected to a Vevo page. Launched at the end of last year,
Vevo is owned by three big music recording fims, among them Alizée's current label, Sony, with video hosting for Vevo provided by YouTube, and Google and Vevo splitting the advertising revenue.
If music which Alizée (or another artist) owns or has sold is hosted on YouTube,
automated methods now exist either to take it down at once or monetize it with ad revenue. This is not to say that music can now fetch the price it once did in the pre-digital era, when it cost so much to record and transport. Refusing a small ad-based YouTube revenue stream does NOT now mean consumers are forced to buy legitimate physical recordings from proprietors. They can get their hands on the music merely by "ripping" a borrowed CD, or getting a file copy, directly or indirectly, from someone who has done that. That is why the music recording industry is sinking fast.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scruffydog777
Another member of the fan forum I belong
to found out on the 19th about this open house, in Boston. He's from
Georgia, I'm from Boston, but he's the one who finds out. Go figure.
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The broadband Internet puts
every connected person on earth within a second of accessing comprehensively indexed information made available online, which now includes something like a TRILLION static Web pages. (And this omits considering the massive unindexed data hiding behind Internet database queries, the so-called "deep Web").
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scruffydog777
Should I e-mail them
first or just show up with a brief case full of cds? If I e mail
them, they might think I'm doing this for some type of financial gain,
where if I just show up in person, hopefully they'll be able to see
I'm sincere in what I'm trying to do. Maybe they also do a little fund
raising for their cultural center. I'll make a $100.00 donation, that
might be small potatoes to them but maybe it will somewhat prove my
sincerity.
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I would advise spending half an hour looking over the Web site of
The French Cultural Center of Boston before practicing the very problematic art of mind-reading. It should not be hard to divine many of their policies and motivations with all that is written there.
Find basic information at:
http://www.frenchlib.org/index.cfm/l...h-at-the-fccb/ including the following:<blockquote>
We're a language school and member of the Alliance Française network... We belong to the largest network of French language and cultural centers in the world, with 1,200 chapters in 112 countries (including 140 chapters in the US)... [We have] native speaking instructors...
We're a library... The second largest private French library in the country with over 25,000 volumes...
We're a cultural center... We offer over 100 programs each year... </blockquote>Donations are welcome, as documented at:
http://www.frenchlib.org/index.cfm/s...ontribute-now/
Membership in TFCCoB is open to all, with a membership fee schedule (basic annual price $120) published at:
http://www.frenchlib.org/index.cfm/m...gories-signup/
and benefits described at:
http://www.frenchlib.org/index.cfm/membership/join-us/
If you purchase a
language instruction course, a half-price discount on annual membership is (often?) available.
It is not that odd if strangers at an open house speak with one another. But don't be surprised if someone paying the rent there in order to drum up business is upset if his message is muted or gets confused by the relentless hard-sell of one of his putative guests. A paid-up novice subscriber of the organization might be afforded more liberties, but would naturally touch base with its managers before taking such. Who knows? He might be offered the opportunity to host a program there on
another occasion if it was consistent with the goals of the institution and could help pay the rent through imposed fees.
Now, they do not control the public right-of-way outside of their premises, and Boston may have no legal problem with people standing on the street in a strategic position and handing out freebies to those who will take them. Personally speaking, as the proprietor I might be a bit unsettled by this, but the hawker would still have my grudging admiration.
Another soon-forthcoming TFCCoB-sponsored event which might have even more potential for making Alizée converts is the annual Bastille Day street party in Back Bay, which has space to accommodate up to 2,000 guests. Find 2010 details at:
http://www.frenchlib.org/index.cfm/e...ille-day-2010/ and
http://www.worldmusic.org/concerts_e....php?p_seq=820 Admission is $28 per head in advance. No doubt the arrangements for this year are now set in stone. But who knows? Maybe it would be possible for a French music fan or two to
rent booth space next year!
And wherever you find yourself in this big world, remember to check
http://french.meetup.com/all/ for the nearest French "meetup" group. ("Netbooks" now start at about $150 and WiFi hotspots are hardly unknown at modern airports!) The biggest such group in metro Boston is
The Boston French Language Meetup Group, headquartered in Cambridge, with 1350 registered members. And there are even OTHER such large groups in metro Boston as well. (I had written previously at AAm about leveraging such groups in NYC.)
<table align="center" width="75%" cellpadding="10" border="10"><tr><td><center><big><big><big>L E A R N I N G F R E N C H</big></big></big></center><br> I think it is much easier for a typical English speaker to learn to read and write French than to speak and listen to it. The visual appearance of French is not completely alien to English, although words do not always mean exactly what you might imagine! You can put a Google Translate widget on your Web browser to automate translation between the two languages, and you could make it a habit to look at everything you read online in both French and English - literary immersion, if you like. And all of this is FREE!
Another free resource which premiered over three years ago now is
France 24. Perhaps motivated by French nationalism as a foil to CNN and the BBC, it streams all its news stories in English as well as French. Listen to both vesrions via VoD and immerse yourself for free with sounds and moving pictures! A few years ago Sarkozy said he wanted to keep only French, but so far things have not changed.
And of course now they sell all sorts of wonderful interactive computer-based learning tools to supplement old-fashioned audio recordings.
And I would be surprised if you couldn't find IRC chatrooms and forums which let all levels of students share the joys and pains of learning a new language, far beyond the limited facility available at Alizee America. And just think what a free videoconferencing tool like Sjype makes possible! Find a French speaker who wants to learn English as much as you do French and voila! You have a patient, complementary study-buddy for free, distance (albeit not time zones) be damned!</td></tr></table>
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scruffydog777
I'll have to
print up a bunch of cd's with samples of Alizée's French music....
Then I have to make a letter or flyer to go with it.
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There is something to be said about selling things through multiple channels - including ideas like appreciation for music and its creators.
But remember this: The LARGE majority of American homes now have a broadband Internet conection! People who live in such places can readily access material stored online (sometimes even with a cellphone). You don't have to give people a CD to show them samples of music, you just have to get them to go online! (They might erase a bookmark they create in their cellphone Web browser, but they will never lose it the way they might a CD.)
It costs almost nothing to lease a mneumonic URL and point it at any place you choose to host online content like text, YouTube playlists, photos, and even annotated links to OTHER Alizée Internet facilities AlizeeAmerica.com, AlizeeRadio.com, etc.) So why not lease ILoveAlizee.com and hand out tschakas with this name on it? This can certainly also include flyers and labels on CDs with recorded content! And don't forget your teeshirt with ILoveAlizee.com emblazoned in big letters, and on both sides!
I doubt they have many "ghetto blasters" in Ajaccio, but it is now most easy to always wear a far more demure MP3 player (e.g. iPod nano) on a necklace and stick an attached battery-powered speaker-amplifier in your jacket pocket. (Even all of five summers ago, you could already buy an MP3 player without memory for as little as $10 after rebate!) Boston Harborwalk, for one, understands this and has long offered you a
free MP3 walking tour to download. And if you need video to "make the sale," I think an "old-fashioned" book-sized battery-powered portable DVD player, or a more modern portable video player (e.g. video iPod) based on magnetic or flash memory, are affordable as well.
Right now, people are making great progress on cloth-thin electronic video displays and it will not be too many more years before they sell upscale clothing which integrates them. And even now it is not that burdensome to hang a small LCD monitor around your neck, or sew one into the back of a jacket.
BUT... when and with whom you would turn these things on is the socially problematic issue! When we run street fairs here, we have rules about these things, banning "hawkers" who do not rent booths, and even regulating what booth lessors can do.
There are many ways to reach people in metro Boston who either speak French or enjoy French culture. They will never be a large fraction of the total population, but there are more than enough of them for an Alizée-lover to befriend - and maybe even evangelize.
P.S. Fun fact to mention to
Bostonians: As a child, Alizée studied at a famous dance and theater school in Ajaccio located on a street named
Avenue du Président Kennedy.