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 ;)

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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