2 new video channels and more!

Not much is happening regarding to music recently here and I know that one or the other dislikes this a bit ;). But currently I want to try some stuff I always wanted to try. And since I test whether you really can make money with Youtube lately, currently just about anything circulates around Youtube and videos. But promised: New music will also be created again soon. Look at it this way: Right now I just have a little time off from being a musician. Constant change keeps the brain fit ;).

Sonny is gaming! My Let's Play Channel AlionLiveLP
You do not know what a Let's Play is? You can be helped. Just click here! I am with my 46 years certainly the oldest Let's Player of the multiverse and in the way I'm doing the whole probably also otherwise unique. Currently, there is just one video on my channel, but that will change very soon when I have time for an extensive gaming session. As the first game I have chosen the old classic "The Elder Scrolls III - Morrowind" extremely modded. Unfortunately, for the people who do not understand German, my first Let's Play is in German. Sorry, but my version of Morrowind is in German language. But I will for sure do some English Let's Plays also, because I also have some English games. In the future you will not read any further information about the Let's Play channel here, as it is part of the AlionLive project. It is therefore advisable to either subscribe to the AlionLive blog, like the AlionLive Facebook page or to subscribe to the Youtube channel if you want to stay up to date. Here is the first video. And I was indeed as nervous as it seems ;).

Life long learning ... and teaching! My Tutorial Channel "Multiversity of Alion"
I was asked several times if I could make a video tutorial about this or that. Mostly, these questions based on my activities in the area of ​​3D graphics in Blender or making music in FL Studio. And so it is not surprising that the currently only video on the new channel is a Blender tutorial. A fairly modest one, but it is also only the introductory part of a series on audio visualization using Blender. More coming soon. And it will not only be Blender tutorials: I will also make tutorials about making music in FL Studio, Web design, programming in various programming languages ​​etc. My repertoire is quite extensive ;). However, news concerning the tutorial channel will be posted for the time being here, because I do not have plans for an independent "web identity" for this project yet. Certainly one day there will be a separate blog and a Facebook page, but currently I have simply no time for that. Have fun with my first tutorial. Nervous? Never! ;)

The alionmind records video channel
This one (LINK) I introduced already in the last two blog entries in detail. However, also a lot has happened here. 22 pieces of music are now already available and there will be more. Today I have just uploaded an old classic from 2006, which is also on the free album "The Alion Archives". You find more information about the track in the video description on Youtube.

So, that's it so far. Stay tuned, because it will always get more interesting ;)

The end of the alionsonny music video channel!

Now you have to be very brave: The alionsonny music video channel with the old SD videos will cease to exist. It was somewhat hard for me to kill this legendary institution. Thank you for 7614 views and the 26 subscribers for almost 7 years of loyalty. Why is that now? The reason is a very good one, and I am sure you will like it: There is a brand new alionmind records Youtube channel, on which you will from now on find the music videos of the projects alionsonny, Cimelium and Willma Poppen. This is mainly because of "organization reasons". On this channel you will be able to watch all the old videos in one place. But the best is yet to come: I'll try to upload videos for all released tracks of the 3 projects. Is this guy now completely insane? To create elaborate videos for the whole repertoire is a work that takes forever! Yes, absolutely right! And that's why there will not be elaborate videos for all the tracks. Most so-called music videos on Youtube are on the  ​​visual side just still images and no one seems to care about that much. For the very old tracks, especially those on the free albums, I'll do exactly that. For the newer ones, I will decide depending on the case, whether I will create a simple visualization or an elaborate video.

So, these are the news. Please don't forget to subscribe to the new alionmind  records channel, so you are always not up to date. This is especially true for those who had already subscribed to the old channel. See you on Youtube!

The alion conspiracy - A game of thoughts

I promised some folks on Facebook to post that. I myself found it a rather bad idea, as there's enough people allready out there, who think that I am nuts. But, well, what damage can some more do?  So be it: Let's play a game of thoughts:

1. Conspiracy theories are for nutters. This counts especially if there are other and better explanations for what happened than a conspiracy.
2. Conspiracy theories are especially nutty, if an individual suspects a conpiracy against himself.
3. It is a special and very nutty case, if 2. is done by a relatively unimportant person.

Those facts are the basis of me not drifting into the "twilight zone" and usually I am quite proud about it. But there's another rule I have:
If you investigate a certain incident and eliminate all profoundly impossible claims: Whatever is left, how irrational it may sound: It must be the truth.

So far the rule codex we will take as a basis of this "little experiment". Let's set the stage:

There is a well known video publishing plattform, called Youtube, which has (Youtubes own statistics) more than 1 billion unique visitors each month. Many of them randomly surf the site and are not looking for anything special. It is like TV Zapping in the internet age. Youtube does quite a great job, entertaining those people by providing them with more or less random video recommendations, based on their previous viewed videos. This makes it possible that EACH AND EVERY video uploaded to Youtube gets some views. If you now count in the usual random factor of mistakes, misspellings, misplaced clicks or simply curiosity, each video should get a good ammount of clicks. Ever wondered how a video with a boring guy talking about boring stuff in a boring environment got 40.000 view in just one month: Here's your explanation. It is his share of the gaussian distributed randomness of all existing things. It is the white noise of the very populated internet. The more people are at a certain place/website, the more likely it is, that even profound bullshit atracts some of those people.

Am I boring you allready? Ok, then I will make it a bit more interesting for the male audience ;). Let's imagine a central place in your city. Would you imagine, that one day a nice female would showcase her boobs to the public there? Well, if your city is in fact a small town, this will most probably not happen in ages. BUT: The more people are visiting that place, the more possible it is that some day a young, good looking lady is up for some fresh air around her boobs. This is called PROBABILITY.

Let's get back to Youtube (*yawn*). Let's imagine the following: You upload a video without any content, let's say pure black screen for one minute, give it some random tags, title etc. If my assumptions above are correct, your video should attract at least your share of the "Youtube White Noise", right? And this should of cause happen without you promoting the video anywhere. A simmilar experiment I did recently, just out of curiosity, generated 74 views in one week. If I had chosen a clever title such as "You will not believe this! Alien invasion on its way! Prepare!", did tag-spamming by filling in tags like "free,sex,porn,money"... you name it and spreaded the video viral across the web, I am sure it would have generated a lot more views. And remember: All without any interesting content.

What would you say, taking all of the above into account, if you uploaded videos to Youtube (quality and content still doesn't matter here) and even one of them gets no views in, let's say, a day? What would you say, if a whole Youtube channel, existing since about 2 years with 50+ videos on it doesn't get ONE view in a whole week? And now imagine that the people you personally know who watched the videos say, that they are interesting, entertaining, beautiful etc.

Wouldn't you say, that this is against the rules of probability? Wouldn't you say, that this is "twilight zone"? Yes? Well, then I am in the "twilight zone", because exactly that happened to me. I have a 2 year old channel with 50+ videos with (i think so) quite entertaining content. If I tell you now, that often my channel gets no view in a whole week... is that in compliance with the rules of probability? Each video uploaded adds to the probability of somebody watching one of the videos by accident etc. For this it is absolutely unneccessary, that anyone is really interested in my videos. And if you now count in the fact, that I am not just uploading my videos to the "great video dump", but promote them heavily all over the web... Something is not right here, or am i wrong?

Let's set this clear: I am not whining here about too little views and/or subscribers. It is just the reaction of a human being, confronted with... well weird things happening, and trying to find a LOGICAL explanation. I am a very stubborn guy and I will continue uploading videos even if they get no views, and if it is just to laugh about this crazyness happening. So, no moaning and groaning here, but just pure amazement.

Let's wrap this up: There are countless folks out there, who would. if they were experiencing the same, love the thought, that there's a conspiracy against them. NOT ME!

1. I don't have a logical explanation for the facts described above. In fact noone of the people I talked about this with has one. So rule number one from the top of that posting does not apply, right? So, this is a point for the "twilight zone" team.
2. I am not important in any way (at least as far as I know ;)). So why should anyone put up a conspiracy against me? Point for the "logic & reason" team.

So this ended up in a draw, as I think. One point for "twilight zone", one point for "reason & logic". I just talked with a Facebook friend about me writing this blog post, and she thinks, that there is in fact no point for the "logic& reason" team. I simply quote her: "How do you know you are not important in any way? Everybody is important in some way, or he/she wouldn't exist". Well, that's too esotheric for my brain. Would I think that way, I could join all the other online nutheads, observing conspiracies all over the planet. I am a player in the team of "reason & logic" and I love it.

But what about the inevitable facts? I think for the sake of my leftover sanity, I simply ignore them and keep uploading videos. Even IF there is a conspiracy: People are watching and hopefully enjoying them. It is just that the conspiracy manipulates the view counts *snicker*.

Be well and allways remember: THEY are after you ;)

I give up... or not?

I thought for quite a long time, if I should write this posting and if, in which form. I allready see the feedback: There will be the ones who are honestly sorry about it all happening, but also folks who with intention get me wrong. I hope, that the experience I gained so far in the communication process with you out there over the years, helps me to avoid the worst misunderstandings. Well, on the other hand, I could handle it like a friend suggested it yesterday "Never mind! You are giving up! What do you care what people think about you now?". Well, I am not that way.

I also am unsure about, if I should describe it all to you in detail, or just keep it crisp and short. I pretty much know, that each and every bit or negative information about me, my life etc. I give to you makes you flee in masses. The media consumer of today wants no bad news. You want the happy, funny Sonny and not his reallife problems. Most probably each of you out there has their own and doesn't want to be bothered with those of others. That's why I will try something in the middle and hope it works.

What happened? Inspired by an exceptionally positive mail regarding my AlionLive Madeira Series (hello Isa!), I realized, that I possibly waste my time. What I somehow ignored so far and didn't really realize is, that the ammount of work and effort I put into my works is absolutely disproportionate to the reception I get for my works. And NO, I want to set this crystal clear: This is no possible stupid form of some kind like a "revenge", like "You do not subscribe to my channel, and buy not enough albums, so I quit!". I pretty much know, that the rather bad minded folks out of you will presume it all in that way. And this while it is quite easy to understand my real motives.

Each human has a limited ammount of time and uses it preferably for a usefull purpose. Sure: One can do many things in form of a so called hobby, just for fun and to make others happy, and that's great... as long as the ammount of time put into a particular activity is not too overwhelming. Because then it turns into a job and a job should be preferably paied. Here we have to use different aspects of "does it pay". And that is not neccessarly connected to money. I still remember the first gig of my first Punk band very well. The audience was 3 people who had free tickets. If it went on like this, I think the band would not have existed as long as it did. Nobody wants to play gigs at empty houses.

Regarding to my activities, currently every thing is quite questionable, when it comes to the topic of "Does this make any sense? Does it pay AT ALL?". I sell a laughable ammount of albums, my Youtube channel is most probably the least viewed and subscribed channel in the known universe and the ad-revenue is because of that rather not mentionable. This would be completely ok... if there wasn't that gigantic ammount of time I put into my works. People like Isa, who told me in precious words about how she experienced and liked AlionLive Madeira know how much work is put into making the music and the videos. Well and that's by far not all. But many people still think that my work is something one could click together in just a few minutes.

What is happening now? I plan to for at least a month put a halt on all projects. This regards AlionLive, alionsonny, Willma Poppen and Cimelium. I am very sorry for those who allready wait for the next AlionLive videos and also the albums announced allready. I again emphasize: This is not some kind of "This is what you get from all that". Such kind of thinking is no part of my agenda at all and you, as loyal fans, should know that allready ;). In that month, I will put it all to the test and view all aspects of my work rather regarding to sustainability, reasonability, possible ways to go further and of cause also the financial part of it all. I will look if there is anything I can possibly do to increase the proportionality between the work, time,money i invest and what I get back. And at latest at the end of the month I will decide if the projects are continued or completely abandonned.

I want to be honest as allways: If I do not discover any blatant error in my promotion strategies, it looks rather dark for a continuation of my projects. But I would not do that "month of truth", if I had no hope. In all events, something has to change drastically. I MUST become more professional. The last time I said this, it resulted in the loss of a majority of my audience. It was back then in 2010, when I decided to no longer give away my music for free. Let's hope we can handle this more in an adult-ish way this time ;)

As allways I am interested in your opinion and welcome each form of constructive discussion (preferably via mail). The Blog comments stay moderated, because I expect some folks to run wild here ;)

What's goin' on?

Well, everthing which is not going off ;) Dunno if that "joke" makes sense in English language in German it does ;) So, there were no news posted on this Blog for quite a time. And because most of you do not read my news on Facebook, Twitter etc., it is most likely, that by now some of you ask themselves if everything is going smooth here at the alions den. Well, it does. Since my last post indeed some stuff happened. Not as much as I would have liked and some stuff happened not the way it was supposed to. Well, here's the story. I try to keep it short...

On New Years Eve a wonderfull friend (and even bigger Willma Poppen Fan) remembered, that she did not give any gifts for Christmas to me this year. You know: I do not give much attention to all that gifting stuff, even tho I like to receive gifts. But gifts aren't a must here. Well and that amazing lady has also a very amazing memory. And so she remembered that recently I answered her question about what I still want for my computer with "SSD and 8 GB of RAM to upgrade it to 16 GB". And so she dragged me to my trusted hardwaredealer and we bought the components. Now the experienced PC builder asks himself what troubles may lay ahead when installing those components... and the PC builder, experienced in trouble knows: "A lot!". And so it happened: After installing the components, my former system disk (which was to be replaced by the SSD) was no longer recognized by the system. This caused a little loss of data, which... well .. complicated some stuff. A rather lengthy data recovery process and some secondary problems with the new system also stole some time from me. Well, so far the decription of that little desaster, which caused quite a slowing down of my work at the start of the year. And still I got some stuff done, of which I simply forgot to report some here in this blog also:

1. Most of you will surely be happy about the fact, that the introduction part of "AlionLive Return 2 Madeira" is finally finnished and online. Ok, it is just an introduction, which consists of 99% me talking into the camera, but a start has been made. Now the rest will go rather smooth. There was not much of an opportunity during the hollidays and new year to turn my small flat into a videostudio and this, amongst a few other things, kept me from getting further with this. For the upcomming parts of ALR2M I must ask for your patience again, because the ammount of raw video material is gigantic and I will put more effort this time in the cutting and postproduction. But here's the introduction part for now. Have fun!


2. The "ghostproject", how friends call it, also did a big step forward. Which "ghostproject"? Well, TUBENWURST of cause! That project, which is, so to say, the sequel of the album "Electronic Spacerock" released it's third track so far. And this one is dedicated to a very special person I met on my next-to-last day in Madeira. And because of that the track is named after that person "Beatrice". Want to hear it? Of cause...


3. Around Christmas the first track of Willma Poppen after the release of the Album "Heroes of the Popp-Culture" was released. So, this is the first track for an upcomming second album by Willma Poppen. You can read more about that in the official Willma Poppen Blog. Wanna hear the track? Here it is:


4. Around New Years Eve I startet a sweepstakes, where you can win one of five free downloads of the Album "Heroes of the Popp-Culture" by Willma Poppen. Due to the IT-desaster described above, the promotion of that event was nearly completely trashed. Because of that, i decided to delay the drawing of the winners to the 30th of January. So you still have the chance to participate. Read the details in the official Willma Poppen Blog.

5. And what about the relaunch of all alionmind websites? Simple answer: Currently nothing! Due to the IT-desaster described above that got...complicated. Once everything is again up and running here, I'll work at it with full force.

So, what did I forget? Of cause something. Once I remember everything I forgot to write here, there will be an update. Until then: Be well and heads up, this winter will also be over one day ;)

State of emergency is starting today!

Yes, today I will get my lazy ass up and give all my project sites (alionsonny.com, alionsonny.de and everything under alionmind.com) a hefty update. It is time to wipe away all the amateurish away. Too much is still reminding of the hobbyist times when I gave away everything for free and to change the overall design of the websites to something more professional.

This will, most probably, become a tough ride for you as the website users. I cannot imagine the whole process to be free of any accidents. So stay tuned and excuse the one or the other "side-effect" of me working on the sites. If the homepage is not available, you will still get news via Facebook and Twitter. If something should not work for a longer time, and you think I forgot to fix something, don't hesitate to contact me via mail. E-Mail will allways work ;)

What to expect? My main goal now is to make it easier and more accessible to buy albums, to be able to listen to music and get the latest news without being distracting by unneccessary stuff.The websites and also the blogs will get a more uniform and pleasant look & feel and I want to create more possibilities of interaction between you and me. I will ask you about your opinion about some of my ideas during the time I am working at the whole thing. For examle somebody had the idea of an alionmind records forum. What do you think about that? Would you participate actively in such a forum?`Well, personally I think, that this all works with the Facebook Fansites allready.

Well, I will now start to work. So during the next hours, it is more than just possible, that instead of the websites, you will see a boring "under construction" message. I will keep you updated.

Win a download of Cimelium's album "Mesopotamia" & more!

It is time again to let you know what is happening here currently. A great occasion for that is the fact, that the music project Cimelium is giving away 5 free downloads of the album "Mesopotamia". That's something for those who have allways no money, eh? All details about your chance to win one of those free downloads, you can read at the official Cimelium Blog. You can take part in this until 23rd of December.

For all those who are waiting for "AlionLive Return 2 Madeira": Patience! I have a little creative mess regarding to the 3D intro and a small but powerfull sickness kept me from filming the introduction. But however: AlionLive Return 2 Madeira will start before christmas.

I work at new music at various fronts. The next you will most probably get, is a new song of the project "Tubenwurst", which did not really release much since it was declared to be the stylewise heir of alionsonny's "Electronic Spacerock". I have a track for that project allmost ready, which perfectly fits into the concept of electronic rock, synthpop and 80s music, which is actually the main genre direction of Tubenwurst. For Cimelium, I work at songs for the second themed album, titled "Madeira". I allready did some quite good work for that during the past days. And REALLY great progress can be reported from the progress of new works for the Willma Poppen project. Some people allready warn, that it may be confusing for the audience, if Willma Poppen releases a second album in 2012 ;) You see: Some great stuff is happening!

I also decided to give the websites of the alionmind records empire a new kick into a new direction. "Inspired" by a recent hacker attack on all of my websites, I found out, that some of the internals of the core content management system must be cleaned up. Also the overall handling and design of, especially, alionsonny.com is not just a bit dusted. It still breathes a touch of the old "I give everything away for free" era. That must be changed ;)

Ok, so far for the news and don't forget to participate in the Cimelium sweepstakes!

The eternal Youtube Game - Stupid Copyright Claims

Time for a little rant again, because there's something which really gets on my nerves. Of cause you remember my AlionLive video about the biketrip to the Baltic Sea, right? And for sure you also remember a posting I wrote on this Blog, about that some people claimed, that the soundtrack, from my Pop-Techno project "Willma Poppen" was their intellectual property. Well, after a short time the claim was withdrawn and everything seemed to be allright.

Well, until I decided to monetarize my videos, which means, to put advertisings in them. When I did that, instantly a new copyright claim was made. "Times Music India" and again "One or more music publishing rights collecting societies" claimed, that there was a musical composition titled "Shakti" in my video. So I rejected that copyright claim again, by "disputing it"... as Youtube calls that process. Nothing happened. While the first copyright claim had been withdrawn in just a few hours, now nothing happened at all. In the video manager, beside the stupid copyright claim, there was a text which said, that "an answer is expected until November 6th 2012". And exactly on that date the copyright claim was withdrawn.

The monetarizing for the video was still inactive. So I clicked the "monetarize"-link again. And guess what happened... I got a message that this time even 3 parties were claiming a copyright on music in my video. This time it should have been a musical composition titled "Pearl's Girl". Meanwhile I found out that it is a song by the band "Underworld". I listened to that song on (now that's funny) Youtube, and could not hear any similarities to ANY song of the Willma Poppen project. The funniest thing about that is, that I found all existing versions of "Underworlds" song "Pearl's Girl" on Youtube on Accounts of which I am sure that they do not have any rights on the song. So, Youtube: Why do you not wipe that crap away in the first place before accusing honest musicians to use copyrighted music?

One more and maybe the most interesting fact is, that each and every song used in the "Biketrip to the Baltic Sea" video is used in at least one more video on my AlionLive channel and for none of those other videos a copyright claim has ever been made. A special thing here is the AlionLive Madeira part about a busride from Funchal to Curral das Freiras. It hads allmost exactly the same set of songs by Willma Poppen in it's soundtrack as the "Biketrip to the Baltic Sea" video. This video is monetarized and NEVER has a copyright claim been made by anybody.

So why is it all just happening with the "Biketrip to the Baltic Sea" video? In discussions at forums etc. about that topic some selfmade "professionals" talked about a magic tool by Youtube (Google) which magically scans videos for copyrighted content. Somehow this is impossible, because then that scanner would have found foreign content in the AlionLive Madeira video mentioned above also. Because that didn't happen, the idea regarding the badly calibrated contentscanner seems not to work. Additionally, I listened to each and every song mentioned in the copyright claims and even checked the digital waveform. There is not the slightest similarity between any of them and ANY of the Willma Poppen works.

The answer to the question why all this happens, seems to be connected to the number of views a video has. The "Biketrip to the Baltic Sea" video is the secondmost viewed video on my AlionLive channel and looking at the statistics it has the biggest potential. I don't now which objectives are the reason to deprive me of my ad revenues as long as possible, but this is for sure no propper business behaviour. I would have loved to talk about that issue to any "Youtube Support" but such a support does in fact not exist. What a absolutely unprofessional business is Youtube, that all the times new copyright claims can be made against a business partner, who repeatedly said, that he just uses his own works for his videos. I am able to bring each and every evidence that this is true. I am the only person in the universe who has the original raw material and project files for each and every bit of media which is used for the videos I upload on Youtube. It would be fine if one was able to sue the shit out of those people who allways claim that my works are theirs. But because the process regarding the copyright claims is totally intransparent, one is not even able to contact those idiots who claim copyrights on my genuine works, and ask them, for example, who crapped that giant turd into their so called brains, that they see a similarity between ANY work of the Willma Poppen project and, for example, "Pearls Girl" by "Underworld". By the way: I feel not honored by that comparison at all.

So, one can only hope, that there will be a better, more professional video upload service one day, which values it's creative users a bit more. Nuff said!

So here are again the copyright claims so far... for your amusement:

• "Victorious", musical composition
• Copyright claimed by: One or more music publishing rights collecting societies
• Note: Initially there was a copyright claim here too by the company Rumblefish, which became world famous for claiming a copyright on bird tweeting. Funny, that this claim has totally vanished ;)

• "Go Getter (David Wiegand Alternate Mix)", musical composition
• Copyright claimed by: One or more music publishing rights collecting societies
• CD Baby              

• "Shanti (Instrumental)", musical composition
• Copyright claimed by: Times Music India
• One or more music publishing rights collecting societies           

• "PEARL'S GIRL", musical composition
• Copyright claimed by: The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA)
• One or more music publishing rights collecting societies
• UMPG Publishing

A new AlionLive Episode... and trouble with Copyright Trolls on Youtube!

Well, actually I just wanted to inform you about the new AlionLive video I uploaded yesterday... if there wasn't our beloved Copyright Trolls, who force me for the first time since quite a time to do a rant. What has happened? After a long time of editing I uploaded the Alionlive episode about my biketrip to the Baltic Sea yesterday evening, and it is by far not the first time, that the contentfilter of Youtube kicked in or some Copyright Troll claims I violated his "intellectual property". However that works internally at Youtube, today there was that well known message beside my freshly uploaded video which said "Matched third party content", which means, that someone "thinks" I violated their copyright. Well, let's have a look. I click on that link and get to know that it is suspected, that my video contains portions of the following foreign content:

 "Go Getter (David Wiegand Alternate Mix)", musical composition administered by: 

rumblefish 

One or more music publishing rights collecting societies

"Victorious", musical composition administered by:

One or more music publishing rights collecting societies 

This means, that Rumblefish AND one or more publishing rights collecting societies have the opinion, that my video contains a song titled "Go getter", to be more precise the "David Wiegand Alternate Mix". A short recherche resulted in, that this song is by an artist with the very creative artistname Michael. But that's not enough. ADDITIONALLY one or more publishing rights collecting societies have the opinion, that my video contains some musical composition with the title "Victorious". 

Ok, here's my answer to this: 

The first claim i understand as a 100% insult against my works, because I have seldomly listened to something boring like "Go getter" by that guy who calls himself Michael. Techno at all is a genre, some artists use as an excuse for their lack of musical creativity, but our dear Michael with his track "Go getter" sets new standards regarding this. Well, EACH technotrack sounds a bit like "Go getter". Why? Because this track is so simple, that you can hear a bit of "Go getter" in each and every technotrack ever produced. It is puzzeling me, that somebody can hold a copyright on something simplistic like that. But let's see... who is claiming a copyright on that track besides one or more publishing rights collecting societies? Rumblefish? Aren't those the guys who claimed a copyright on birdsinging recently? Ahhh I get it! Now Rumblefish wants to claim a copyright on the 4/4 rhythm with the bassdrum on each beat and the prominent use of so called SuperSaws. Because that's all "Go getter" by Michael has to offer... and has in common with a few of my works. And now for the second claim: What is "Victorious"? A song? A band? Ahhh, no it's a "musical composition"... by who? Who's the composer, the performer, the actual copyright holder? ...distributed by which label? Sorry dear Youtube folks, that's a bit vague claim, don't you think? 

So I filed (it's not for the first time) a dispute about those false claims and... after just about 5 minutes I had a mail in my email, that one or more publishing rights collecting societies have checked my objection and withdrew their claim. A glimpse on the status page told me, that this was just for the "Victorious" claim but not for "Go getter" by Michael. The question which came to my mind was, if one or more publishing rights collecting societies directly and within 5 minutes went to my video after I rejected their claim and withdrew their claim because they recognized it was all my own music... Why not the other one regading "Go getter" too? And Rumblefish? i think they really want to copyright the 4/4 rhythm with the bassdrum on each beat and the prominent use of so called SuperSaws. ;) 

FACTS: 

All video- and audiomaterial of that video is like allways my own self produced content. The music is, with the exception of one song, by my sideproject Willma Poppen project. And the only exception is one song I released under the artistname alionsonny. Here's the tracklist:

 0:00 -  0:55 alionsonny - Intro
 0:56 -  5:07 Willma Poppen - Willma Poppen
 5:08 - 10:30 Willma Poppen - Popp-U-Lism
10:31 - 14:33 Willma Poppen - Popp-Corn
14:34 - 19:28 Willma Poppen - Poppin' on heavens Door
19:29 - 24:22 Willma Poppen - Heroes of the Popp Culture
24:23 - 29:29 Willma Poppen - Mrs. Von Poppen's Funny Mushroom Omelette
29:30 - 34:25 Willma Poppen - Poppin' All Over The World
34:26 - 39:48 Willma Poppen - Strandspaziergang
39:49 - 44:40 Willma Poppen - Popp-Eye
44:40 - 47:53 alionsonny - Entomologia 

I strictly advise Youtube to look out for a better contentfilter and/or not to listen to each and every copyright troll in the multiverse. I really think about claiming the copyright for "Go getter", because that strange use of a 4/4 rhythm with the bassdrum on each beat and the prominent use of so called SuperSaws seems to be copied from the Willma Poppen Project ;). No, just kidding! That shitty capitalism which is basically responsible for bullshit like the one this rant is about, will eat itself. And now have fun with my latest video:

Regarding my birthday on July 19th

Yepp, folks, again a year has passed and on July 19th I reach the age of 44 magical years. Why do I mention this on that Blog, which is usually only for things regarding my creative activities? Well, that's not very easy to describe. I have a little problem, which is caused by the great fact, that there are many kind and loving people out there, who want to send me a gift for birthday. Yes, even such beautiful facts can morph into some kind of a problem. Of cause I am very happy if I get to know somehow, that there are kind people who think about how they can make me happy on my birthday. No question!

So what's the problem? A few days ago, I told some folks (who like to talk to others ;)), that I urgently need a new tent and sleepingbag for my tours. My existing tent and sleepingbag are in a very ugly condition because they are of biblical age. The tent poles are damaged and the tent itself has no impregnation anymore. At the sleepingbag the filling is comming out. Well, very quickly there were not just a few kind folks, who thought, that this would be a great birthday present for me. Maybe it was my experience which lead to the fact, that the next nights I had nightmares about my flat being filled with mountains of tents and sleepingbags, so i was drowning in them. The problem is, that neither me or others know what you decided is your birthday present for me. And so it can happen, that suddenly I sit there with 20 tents and 50 sleepingbags... which is not really optimal...

Because of this, I set one thing clear now and here: The person who gives me a new tent and sleepingbag for birthday has stated to do so and therefore there's no use for anybody else to do the same. Therefore I beg all those who eventually had the same idea, and HOPEFULLY didn't buy anything yet, to think about another gift. Again: Several dozens of tents and sleepingbags are not on my wishlist. So pleeeeaaaaseee.... I am very sorry if you , after you thought everything was clear, now have to think about a different present, but I need just one sleepingbag and one tent.

Ok, you got the information that I need a tent and sleepingbag from me myself & I. So why shouldn't I tell you, who now lost his birthday gift idea, what would be an alternative and what else I wish for my birthday? I'm a practically thinking guy ;) So, what do I need? Because I do not want to stretch your financial abilities, I do not mention the bigger wishes... WHAT? You are rich and want to know about them? Well, I could use a quite powerfull laptop for my planned livegigs (live dubbing etc.) and also maybe a nice solid state disk... Well, YOU wanted to know it *LOL* Nope, let's keep it realistic: I allways have a lack of battery power for my Panasonic HDC SD40 camcorder. I would really love to go on a biketour for AlionLive or so for several days without the need of a wall socket. Well that would be a nice idea for a birthday present and I can't get enough battery capacity for my camcorder ever. And that stuff is not very expensive.

Anything else? Not really something I can imagine right now. If you want to send me something for birthday now and you don't know what, you can still do me a favor in gifting me some cash. See: A laptop with the power I need is about 400 Euro. If just a few of you out there send me some cash via Paypal (or otherwise -> let's talk), then even such a relatively big gift as the laptop and/or the SSD are not impossible. My Paypal address is alionsonny@alionsonny.com and if you don't like Paypal, just contact me using the same mailaddress so we find a different way.

However and whatever you send me for birthday, I will be happy about it... unless it's a few dozens of tents and sleepingbags ;)

Here we go again...

The new year started...well..."turbulent". There's nothing more that you, dear readers and listeners, have to know about this. At least I felt not very able to make music or let you know what was happening via this blog. First I have to apologize to those who tried to listen to music on alionsonny.com between Sunday 10:00pm and Monday (today) 6:pm. At the newer songs you most probably ended up on an errorpage. This was due to some problems at my former favourite reggaesite ReggaeDubwise. Because of the fact that streaming and downloading my songs from there is also not secured in the future, I decided to redirect all songlinks to the safe and reliable Archive.org. By now everything should work fine again.

What is Sonny doing right now? These days making music is not working so good, but I started programming again. The domain alionsolutions.de, which has been unused for ages will be the home of the fruits of my programming works in the future and everything will also being ready for download there. Amongst other ideas I am working at a interesting chat solution which will be implemented in Java. I also work at alionfractal 2.0 again, also using Java. Let's wait and see how performant a fractal generator written in Java is. Recently somebody told me, that the Java 6 plattform is oh so performant. We will find out soon if this is true.

Yepp, and thats it for a short status report. I am back at work!

Happy New Year 2010!

There have been better years for me, I must say, than 2009. So I say good riddance to this one and hope that 2010 will be better not just for me but for us all. I know about so many people who had bad luck in 2009 and that not just because of the effects of the so called financial crisis. As some of you may know, I had to close down my business as a freelancer in the IT-sector in June of 2009 and afterwards got awfully sick. Currently I am suffering from a big depression which renders me unable to work. Currently I am living of unemployment benefit because of that and try hard to get on my feet again. But as I said, I know about not just a few people who also are hoping that 2010 things will work out better for them.

But while being one of the worst years so far in my life regarding to financial stuff and healt, 2009 was also a very creative years for me. In fact I released 25 songs this year. Not as much as in the most fruitfull 2004 and 2005 when I released 36/34 songs , but the highest number of songs since then. This may be due to the fact that I had more time on my hands to make music. Here's what my database says about my productivity over the first 5 years of the alionsonny project:

Year Songs Videos
2004 36 0
2005 34 0
2006 15 0
2007 14 5
2008 12 4
2009 25 4
--------------------
ALL: 126 14

I hope that 2010 may be even more creative and fruitfull than this year and all before. Happy New Year and all the best to you out there for 2010!

Merry Christmas and a little Christmas Carol

I want to wish all visitors of my website, all fans of my music, all friends and simply all you folks out there a merry Christmas. I have created a little christmas carol for you too. It is my personal version of the well known christmas carol "Ding Dong Merrily on High". It is a Reggae- /Ska-version. Yes, yes, I know it sounds crazy to think about doing that song in that particular genre. I myself first had some doubt about if this works but in the end it was quite simple. And I think the result is quite good:

Ding Dong Merrily on High - LISTEN
Ding Dong Merrily on High - DOWNLOAD

Can you compose me a song (or 3-4) ... for FREE?

This news entry is somewhat different from the usual news you find here. There's no new song or video to announce this time. No, I just want to share a little rant with you, that's it. So what is it, Sonny is pissed about? Here we go:
Since I am a very nice guy, I share my music, videos and other art with you, mostly for free. Even tho a donation is allways appreciated, I usually do not ask you for money to enjoy what I produce. Well, some people seem to think, that because of that, I must live in Cockaigne, where everything is fluffy and free. But I can assure you: I have to pay rent, electricity, online costs, webhosting etc. and I have to drink and eat and work for it. That just as a bit of information for you.

From time to time, with a increasing frequency, people ask me for "a favor". Some ask me to do something at their homepage, some want me to build a bassline, a drumpattern or some graphics or video stuff.... and of cause for free. Nobody ever had the idea to offer me some cash for my works and usually this is ok, as it is small "favors" which do not cost me a huge ammount of time. So usually I just help out and get more or less credited for it. That's 100% as I love to help.

But then there are those who expect me to do huge ammounts of work for them... also for free. The absolute "bestseller" amongst this is the request "Can you build me a reggae riddim on FL Studio and send me the flp-file (projectfile)?". I usually keep cool if I get such requests, even tho I am tempted to ask the person what the fuck he thinks what ammount of work he just asks me to give away for free. Those requests, may it be for composing complex drumstyles, complete songs or even a whole album concept allways come in with no offer for what I get in return. People expect me to edit their musicvideo for free or even produce a whole musicvideo for them.

What do those folks think? Don't they realize what massive ammount of work is behind all those things? Do they think I am just on this planet to fullfill their dreams? Many of those folks even leave no doubt about, that they want to make money using the services they expect to get from me, like that guy who runs a relatively successfull website with a radio on it, and asked me to create a jingle for his online radio show... for free... while he generates a good income from his website and radio ventures. Do those folks think I am stupid?

Why am I writing this newsentry right now? Easy: Yesterday I got a mail which (from my point of view) put the cream on the cake of impudence. A guy wrote me, that he likes my music (this is how it allways starts) and that he does a site about boardgames. I don't want to go into the details, but the bottomline was, that he asked me if I could do 3-4(!!!) original custom tracks in orchestra style for some videoshow to be played in the background while people talk about a certain boardgame. The fact alone that CUSTOM COMPOSED SONGS should play in the background makes my toenails roll up. This is like using a painting by an old dutch master as toiletpaper... after the dutch master custom painted the painting for just the purpose to serve as an asswipe.... hillarious... eh?

Ok, but never mind the usage and that the site linked at the bottom of the mail was literally screaming THIS IS A COMMERCIAL SITE AND I STRIVE TO MAKE SERIOUS CASH WITH THIS! What did this guy think? Did he think that it is the work of about 5 minutes to create a quality orchestral music piece on todays digital equipment? If so, why doesn't he do it himself. If it is such an easy thing....
The reality is, that a minimum of several hours of work is required to create a quality music track, regardless of its genre. But orchestral tracks require a huge ammount of more work than, for example, a simple pop-techno piece. I plan a minimum of 4-8 hours alone for composing and arranging plus the time for mixing the final result. And can you, dear reader, understand that one must give me a GOOD reason to invest such a huge ammount of my creative lifespan? For me it is clear, that simply giving me credits on some website is not that kind of a GOOD reason.

This is why I indeed do contracting works for music- and video production, graphical works etc. For such tasks as composing complete tracks, producing musicvideos, creating complex graphical artwork etc., I have hourly rates I work on. A good ammount of cash IS a great reason to invest time and work. I think we all live in the same world, right? I think there's nobody living on this planet who doesn't know about the fact, that serious work costs serious cash in our beloved capitalist system. And especially people, on whose websites I only need to take a look and I see that they run a business should know the price of artistical craftmanship. So I cannot really understand how one could make me an "offer" like the one I got yesterday.

To set it clear once again and for all: My free works available for download on several websites are free to use EXCEPT FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES. If you make money with my works, I want my share or hell breaks lose. So, you can use my music as a soundtrack for your holliday videos on YouTube, you can burn them on CDs and give them as a gift to anyone, you can play them on your online radio etc. But once you make serious cash with using my music, don't forget to give me my share.

If you want me to make something special for you, if it is not much work AND it is for non-commercial purposes, you'll most likely have me doing it for free. BUT: If it is a huge load of work, such as producing whole tracks, producing your music video etc., please mail me for my hourly rates, terms of service and other business stuff. This is ESPECIALLY the case, if the usage of my works generates money for you. So consider this, before you mail me, asking me for "a favor".

Another important note: The term "crediting someone" seems to have become a somewhat magical spell for some people. They think that "crediting" pays all bills. Friends and neighbors: I meanwhile have so many people, websites etc. crediting me, that your crediting is nice but just one amongst a huge load. So don't expect the magic sentence "we credit you on our website" to work at me. There's still things I do for crediting, but it must not be too much work.

Long text. I hope all of you out there now know a bit more about me and my handling of "requests for favors". If you feel tempted to ask me for a favor, please keep in mind that I am not a rich wealthy guy who can spent hillarious timespans on making your dreams come true. If I find your name amongst the donators for alionsonny.com, chances are bigger that I will do even bigger stuff for free for you. But if you wanna make sure that I'll work for you, just make a contract with me and pay me.

Alion Free Music Base

Here I am again. Unfortunately not much has happened meanwhile, since a little accident kept me from doing something valuable since mid of last week. But now the show goes on with full force. I am currently working at a new website project, called "Alion Free Music Base". This site will be, and I am completely serious at this, the biggest listing of free downloadable music on the web. Currently I am still working at the framework and try to find some artists who will be the first in the listing. But allthough the site is completely free of charge, just a few artists seem to be interested in free promotion. Well, all things start small... BUT while we are at it: If you are a musician with some free downloadable music online, just mail me: alionsonny@alionsonny.com if you are interested to be listed on my new site.
Ok, what else? Nothing :D Now I am off to create something I can really write about something here...

What's up with alionsonny?

Well, Sonny is somehow on holliday now. The beloved girl is away for 2 weeks to visited some relatives and I have still to work at my dayjob. Still I spend the time left rather with being lazy, gaming etc. instead of doing anything creative. Well, and also the communication with you out there is on hold currently. And because of this, don't be puzzled if mails etc. are not answered very fast.

Still I am not completely uncreative. Currently I record some tracks with livedrumming using my Roland Handsonic 10. I just discovered some cool features of this thing. Ever played Sitar on drumpads, using the touchsensitivity for stringbending? *LOL* Pure fun! The guitar is used very often currently too.

Ok, I plan the following: The first week my girl is away I'll spend with things I like and by the way drink a lot too :D The second week will be hardcore creative work.

And now I'm off, opening a bottle of red wine and dive into the world of Fallout 3 to kill some monsters...

Web.de drives me nuts!

Today it is time again for a bit of complaining about stuff that doesn't work. Because today I wanted to update afew of my pages across the web, which I did not update for a time. Amongst them my Videopage at Web.de. Well I could not remember that I ever signed up there. But szill 3 of my older videos were there. So I thought that I upload some newer today. No big thing... so I thought...
BUT: As I tried to log in, none of my standard passwords worked. No problem: Then I let the site send me my password via mail... so I thought...
I did as advised on the apropriate page and entered my mailaddress in the appropriate editfield. Result: A message that told me, that I entered something the site did not recognize. So I tried the same with my older standard mailaddress. Result: The same. Well there was also written, that one can do this using the username. HAH! That could not go wrong, because my username is the same all across the web: alionsonny. Result: This website also did not know my username!
Well, I clicked my way to the support to find out, that the dropdown menu for the service to support did not contain an option for the video upload service. Great! Well, I chosed "other" and as suboption again "other". But what happened now? I must log in to write to the support. AAARGH! I CANNOT DO THIS WITHOUT LOGIN DATA!!!
I took a deep breath and went to the impressum. Oh, there a infoaddress. I'll mail it simply. Said and done: I wrote a nice support question mail and sent it. Seconds later I got a automated reply which said, that they cannot answer my question via mail and I should contact the support using one of the support pages which only work if one is logged in. BUT there is a nice telephone number also there which costs loads of cash which I can call. Ahh, this is IT! Well, so the videopage stay in the state it is and the account stays a zombie account. So many video upload pages out there with working support. Bye Web.de!

Sunny Sunday

It has been a while since the sun was shining upon the north of germany for a longer time. If I did not miss anything it was cold and grey all the time at least since the first of December. So I was glad to be able to take a walk in the bright sunlight with my girl today. Yeah, that did good!

Not much at the creative side has happened since my last blogging. This is still due to the game "Fallout 3", which is so great that most of the sparetime in the past days was spent playing it. But who cares? I did not play much in the past months, so I do it now ;-)


One thing must be urgently done: Many people ask, why I left the reggae scene. I do not owe any justification to anyone for what I am doing anyway, but I want to describe my decision in detail though. I have more than just little interest in that no wrong assumptions come to life about my decision out there. It is not that way, that I suddenly hate reggae music. It is also by far not that way, that I did not get enough attention/appreciation from the reggae crowd. I never wanted to be a reggae star. I never expected anything from the reggae crowd in that direction. So the attention/appreciation I got is far more than I ever could have expected. The reasons for my decision are too complex to describe them in this blogentry. Because of this, I'll soon publish an extensive article that will set everything straight. So please don't send any questions about that topic anymore.

While we are at "questions by mail": People often ask about my healthstate via mail recently. My answer is: I AM WELL! Yeah, indeed nearly everything is well now. From what everything looked and felt like until mid of december, I would have not thought myself, that everything would go that well so fast, but YES, aside of a few sideefeects of the past illness everything is as it should be. Thanks for all the positive thoughts, prayers and what else some of you did: You may believe that it worked ;-)

I close this posting by embedding a song from the soundtrack of "Fallout 3". I LOVE this song:

Well like I said...

my new favourite game "Fallout 3" has horrible effects. Last night I spent from 00:00 to 07:00am cleansing to post-apocalyptic Washington DC of Ghouls and Supermutants. Well, those Supermutants are fun. Ghouls & stuff became a bit boring after a time, but the Supermutants are REAL oponents. I use the minigun, which is in fact not so mini but rather a gattling, for the distance fight and the 44er magnum for close battle. That makes nice goulash out of those Mutantscam in the wink of an eye. Hehe, like I said: You do not really know that side of me ;-)

Because of all that I got out of bed late at 04:00pm and spent the last 3 hours working at my dayjob. Yeah, that's the advantage of being my own boss / freelancer :D But my sleep-awake-rythm is completely ruined...

Not very much news

Well, currently I have a phase of serious lazyness. Who cares? At least I have finnished the "Links"-section of my homepage. Not really something great, but after all at least something. Additionally I made some progress at my new song. The thing is somehow more complicated to get done than I thought. The conceptual album I am working at since christmas also made some progress, but the is so top secret that I cannot tell anything more about it.

And hey, what means lazyness? I worked all the time hours in advance for my dayjob. If no creative stuff works currently, I earn at least money and create buffer-time for more creative days.

To close this post I embed a great video (german language) recommended by a Telepolis-Forum-Colleague: