Well the commercials have run their course. What kind of results will there be if any? I called Magic today and talked to Jessica Oar and Mark Laurence for a while. Mark said they didn't recieve a bunch of inquiries about this music, but that's typical, because the ads were asking people to go to AlizeeAmerica.com and that's where they would typically go. But I would think if it a lot of people here did like the music they probably would've contacted the radio station. I guess we'll hopefully get some results from Ben. I'll e-mail him later to post the results if any.
I talked to Jessica about the different rates for advertising. The rates at night were about $165.00 a minute. But there prime time rates which runs roughly from 9am to 7 pm, jumps up to about $500.00 a minute. Most of these ads typicaly played after about 1 or 2 minutes of other commercials. I asked if it was possible to have a commercial play right after a song, before people had a chance to skip to another station. They said yes, but that would be another $50/min more. She also said a 30 second commercial runs at about 70% of what a 1 minute commercial runs.
I would have liked to have placed these ads with a top 40 station as opposed to a soft rock station. But as I mentioned before, of the several stations I contacted, this was the only one to offer any serious consideration to what I wanted to do. A soft rock station probably has a some what older listening audience than a top 40 station. I didn't really think this would be a factor, but last week, when I was trying to hand out 50 dvd's of Alizée's music at a time when these ads were running. I found teenagers were the ones who were most responsive and willing to take these discs and to listen to them and what I had to say and because of that, I wish I had searched for another top 40 station where I could've placed the same ads to target a younger audience.
Maybe I should have selected 1 minute commercials, to let people get more of a chance to get into the songs.
I talked to Mark Laurence about what a radio station would have to do in order to be able to play a song of Alizée's. He said there is nothing that could stop them from playing one of her songs if they wanted to. The only thing they have to worry about if the songs or albums are licensed under BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC, in which case just means they have to pay a very small fee each time they play the song.
He mentioned a song called 9 million bycicles,
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It was sung by Katie Malua, who was born in Russia, then moved to Ireland, then London
He said it was a song that everyone at the station loved and they played it many times, but it never really did catch on.
Just goes to show you, if they like a song, they can and will play it.
Bottom line is, where do we go from here?
I think it's important we keep our efforts to put up flyers, give away cds, tell people when ever we can about Alizée.
But is there something we can do on a large scale, such as what I attempted to get her noted in a significant way, that will hopefully lead to something more than just adding another fan here or there? I'm not sure, but I'll continue to work on it.