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 ;)

alionsonny, now also on iTunes, Amazon and Spotify!

Some of you folks told me, that buying my music is too complicated. Directly from me this was the case at all, but also via the (awfull slow) Routenote Shop you told me it is too complicated. And escpecially Europeans told me that at RouteNote "I have to pay in Dollars". Well...

But now, there's no excuse for you all, because on iTunes, you can buy the albums "Alion - The Original Soundtrack", "XperiMental Reggae WorX" and "Electronic Spacerock "international in the currency of your country. The album "Reggae?" is not yet at iTunes. I have to ask why. Additionally you can get all four albums on Amazon and on Spotify. There's no music of mine available yet on eMusic, but maybe my distribution partner did not get this done up to now.

So, let's go! There is really no reason left, why it should be impossible or inconvinient to buy one or the other of my albums!

Planned new features on alionsonny.com and other news...

Some time ago I informed my beloved listeners and readers about the fact, that I will increasingly put a focus on how to get some cash out of my works such as making music. To put it exactly: In the long run I want to make a living out of my works solely.

As part of this strategy, I am now about to change some parts of alionsonny.com. Some of the changes will please everybody and some of the changes will piss people off. But you cannot imagine how little I care about that ;) As a first step, statistics will be collected about the number of plays and downloads of songs. The reason is, that, using the currently used technique, I have not the slightest clue about how many times the songs get streamed or downloaded. Notice: No personal user data will be collected, so your privacy remain untouched. The implementation of the statistics collecting also allows me to implement annoying little windows which pop up when a download is started, which remember the forgetful amongst you of the fact, that donations are more than welcome. Furthermore, this creates the basis for another income concept, the Song-sponsorship, which I will describe in a separate blog for interested individuals and business people.

One interesting and certainly most welcomed change is that it will be possible to buy my music in the future in high sound quality. For this, I will work on a separate shop, where my albums can be downloaded as CD images. There will be alionsonny merchandise available, such as the the often asked for T-Shirts, but also stuff like mugs etc. For this I will most probably use external service providers such as Spreadshirt and Cafepress.

So far for now. If you have any comments or questions about those new features: Feedback is allways highly appreciated!

Let's talk about MONEY!

After I published my statement titled "Why I give away my music for free" several nice people contacted meby mail or Messenger, to discuss how I still could make money with my music and other creative activities, yes, maybe even how I could live of it.

Especially in a messenger conference, people suggested a lot of interesting ideas to me, which I want to tell you about and discuss with you. Here are, among other things, by a group conference on Messenger, some good ideas come about, I would like you of course not denied. I would be very happy if more of you would connect with me in constructive dialogue in order to perhaps develop additional concepts.

Some of you probably know nothing about my financial situation and I will now describe it briefly: I am currently Hartz IV recipient.

That means that I get, if the unemployment office is not busy harrassing me as it is currently the case, unemployment benefit. It all happened like this: By mid 2009, I was a self-employed IT consultant. Unfortunately, it went all down the drain when, because of the economic crisis, I lost all my contractors one by one. One day I saw no other chance than repoting myself as unemployed. In addition, my health went bad and I am diagnosed by the doctors as unable to work since December 2009. Unfortunately, there are folks at the unemployment office who love to harrass unemployed people and delay or cancel the payment of unemployment benefit just for the sake of it. Therefore the payment of unemployment benefit II is anything but regular. I had several cases in which I got no money for some months, and therefore could not pay my rent. This is the case currently again. So much for my situation.

Since I would be VERY HAPPY to live again of my self earned money instead of the unemployment benefit and my chances to find a regular job are rather bad, I am looking for ways to live of what I do anyway, such as making music. As I said, I discussed with nice and benevolent people about ways to achieve this. The current status is this: Although many people seem to like my music, but fail to send a donation from time to time. Except for a one great person who supported me for months, I get almost no donations. That is, in the face of thousands of downloads of my music, very depressing. This has shown very clearly that the idea about voluntary donations does not work.

The logical consequence would be to follow the opinion of my discussion partners, to take down all free downloads of my music from the Internet, and to demand money for each download. As I described in my statement, that is not at all compatible with my principles. A discusion partner said the following: "You have to be able to afford principles". He is most probably right with that statement. Therefore, I think reserve the option to make my music available for cash only as a last resort. But before I take such a crass step which conflicts with my priciples, I'll still try a few other ideas. If those ideas fail like the idea regarding voluntary donations, I'll definately take the last option an make all my music available for cash only.

In the coming blogposts I will explain to you the ideas I've collected for the future with my supporters and launch a survey on these ideas. As a little incentive to you to participate in the planning / discussion, I will be giving away multiple downloads of individual songs and entire albums in high quality uncompressed format. Do not miss this chance, because MP3 is nice, but not really good. So stay tuned.

Why I give away my music for free

In the past six years, since I started releasing music under the artistname alionsonny, one question has been asked over and over again: Why do I give away my music for free instead of selling it? I want to answer this question in this article.

First of all: Some nasty folks claimed that the reason is, that my music was so bad, that I had no chance at all to sell it. Of cause I do not share that opinion. What sense would it make to release music if I had the opinion it was bad music? Additionally, the many thousands of downloads of my music speak louder than words. Because it is possible to listen to every song before downloading it, it is also not true if people claim that those downloads were just made to check the music. Who would download a song, if he thinks it is bad after listening to it?

The main reason that I give away my music for free lies in the fact that I am firmly convinced that it should never be mandatory to pay for being able to enjoy art and culture. The artist has never payed a single cent for his gift to be able to create art and so it is simply not ok to to mandatory require money for the fruits of this gift. There are many people who can not afford to pay money for music. My opinion is that the decision whether or how much to pay should be left to the people. I once referred to me as the "busker of the Internet". I have spent some time as street musician and felt it to be extremely nice when people have voluntary gave a donation for my work to me. I feel this voluntary giving as a much greater confirmation than as if I had forced the people to pay.

I also think that if one sees art as some kind of a dayjob, creativity, and thus the art itself is no longer the main driving force of creating art. This kills creativity and thus the art. Take for example the music industry. They usually publish only "what sells". This means that only what a large majority is willing to buy is to be published. The majority of the record companies will produce only sign an artist, who produces so-called mainstream music. The record companies decide what will be produced and published, based on sales experience of the past, because nobody can predict what will possibly sell good in the future. But how can a music of the future can be created if the record companies solely decide based on sales numbers of the past? I have seen many artists who started with promising concepts and great creativity, which had one or two big hits and after they signed with a record label, they were forced by the label to produce slightly modified copies of those hit singles instead of really new songs. You can not even blame the record companies for what they do. Record companies are profit-oriented businesses. For them everything depends on sales and not on artistic standards and creativity.

However, this has a fatal consequence: The music industry has such a market power, that artists who did not sign a contract with a big record label have little or no chance of being noticed by the audience. What most of the people are listening to and buy is, what is on the television and radio etc.. Radio and television stations are also business enterprises and require loads of money for artist promotion. And the music industry has the money to pay them. But no unsihned independent artis has so much cash. No independent artist can keep up with the monetary power of the music industry. No independent musician has a million budget for advertising. My favorite comparison is between a poor and a rich merchant in a market. The rich merchants has an expensive sound system with which he can draw attention to its products, while the poorer merchant relies solely on his voice. The products of the poorer trader can be as good or even better than those of the rich merchant and he may also have a very loud voice. Against the sound system he just can not compete. So he remains poor, because buyers do not even notice him and his products.

Because of that situation, some of my critics are right when they say that I have no chance against the overwhelming uniformity of industrial productions. I can not keep up with the aggressive marketing of the industry, which is backed up with large advertising budgets. I can do as much as I can much to make my music known to the public, it will not change the big picture. And yes, those who say that I allready capitulated. IF I wanted to make a living with my music, I must somehow get a minimum of money out of my works which enables me to pay my rent and food. And if even not that small ammount of cash comes in, what sense does it make to make it mandatory to pay for downloading my music.

For this reason, I ask all those who love my music, to donate some cash from time to time. It shows me the fact that you like what I do. It is very easy because you can donate via Paypal. If you do not like Paypal, or don't want to use it for any other reason, you can also transfer the donation to my bank account.

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