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 ;)

It is done! alionsonny.de is up to date again and more ...

This went reasonably fast, but it was no mammoth project ;). You may still encounter sporadic side effects of the renovation, but generally alionsonny.de should be fully functional again and, much more important, up to date. On this occasion, I also improved some things, which unnecessarily increased the loading time of the page in the past. I have not touched the visual improvements, I mentioned in the past posting, yet, but these are not so important, that I would delay the work on the album any longer.

Continuity ?
Yes, some of you complain about it already. But I really needed that little break, because my ears urgently needed a break. Creating the release versions has really tired them plentiful and at the end I was not sure if I am still able to hear correctly. The musicians amongst you will know what I mean ;). So what's up with the album? It is almost done! I have finished the release versions of the oldest , and therefore most in need of a review, 10 tracks. The three remaining tracks require, in my opinion and the opinion of many listeners, no major overhaul or improvement. Currently I am working, with the involvement of voluntary test listeners, on the playlist, which determines the order of the tracks. This process is also completed, except for the judgment of a particular person, whose opinion is personally very important to me. This will happen this evening. In this respect, although I can not promise anything 100% as always, the album should be, at least in my Routenote shop, this week. ITunes, Amazon and Co. always take a while.

AlionLive is getting bigger!
First of all: Yes, "AlionLive Return 2 Madeira" will be continued soon . But the album has priority. Nevertheless, there is good news for the fans of this project. My friends on Facebook, as always, already know about it... at least I hope so ;). The most important news, especially for readers of this blog, is, that no news regarding AlionLive will be posted on this blog anymore from now on. This blog is now exclusively reserved for the music project alionsonny. News about new videos etc. will from now on be posted on the new AlionLive Blog (CLICK!). There are also some other things that may be particularly of interest for those, who wish to follow my hikes. AlionLive now also has its own page on Facebook and I would be extremely happy if everyone of you would "LIKE" it. So no one should ask me questions why nothing about AlionLive is posted here anymore ;).

Yes, and that's it for this time. I am back at work!

Out of synch...

I don't know how many of you noticed it, but recently my homepage alionsonny.com is out of synch with this blog. Usually (until the beginning of the year), news which were posted here appeared almost immediately on alionsonny.com, at least to some extent. Also, new videos, music etc. could be found on the homepage with a bit of delay. The reason for this more or less long period of non-synchronicity is now also responsible for the fact that alionsonny.com is "frozen" since January 8th.

Why is it? For this I need to get a little bit into the "technical" details. alionsonny.com runs not on one of those well-known content management systems, which are quite popular amongst those who either have no time or desire to create their own website. And there is nothing to say against that. "Then why are you doing all the work yourself?" An answer to this can be still read in VERY old posts on this blog. I have used such a system for quite a time, namely the well known and very popular Joomla. At this time the website has been hacked so many times that it really was not funny anymore.  "And your great system is unhackable?". No, most probably not. Nothing is unhackable. But the well known CMSs all have one thing in common: They are very well known ;). A hacker or a so-called hacker crew usually has no desire to deal with a self-made CMS and puzzle out possible vulnerabilities if a so-called exploit for a known CMS allows the hacking of thousands of websites. This is exactly the same as with the viruses and trojans, which exist mainly for the most widely used operating system in the world. Monocultures are vulnerable. But please: Refrain from any OS flamewar here ;). And the other reason for my homemade CMS is that it's fun.

Ok, and the current version of my homepage has been hastily stitched together in spring 2013. It should work and be just finished. Here I have put the main focus on that the site visitors can visit my website and I have not only somewhat neglected myself, the guy who has to file in all the data. This caused the fact, that the procedure of filing in news, music and videos was quite complicated. I spare you the unnecessary details ;).

Earlier this year, this really got on my nerves and I decided to no longer update the homepage for a time and instead to build a convenient so-called admin backend, which makes the whole process a lot easier for me. And that's what I'm doing currently. If you see this text on my home page, at least the updating of plain text news is already done. The filing in of new videos and music will be the next step. So have some patience and maybe subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog. A simple bookmark is of course also a solution. Soon everything will be up again and a fix for some already reported "imperfections" is already on it's way.

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 ;)

Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new!

Now it is finally done. The new website is here; not 100% perfect, but quite ok. Some folks allready gave me feedback and of cause the reactions on the new site differ. Of cause, the site has been shrunken down. In the process of "professionalizing" of my work, I prefer easy understandable structures. The old alionsonny.com simply contained too much not really neccessary information. Just an example: Who is interested in an endless list of song titles and the corresponding exact dates of release? Ok I am, but I do not really think you are. Another example? How are fractal images and Raytracing experiments exactly connected to the musicproject alionsonny? Right: In no way!

What I simply recognized throughout the whole process of transformation from a "everything for free fun project" to a professional music project was, that my website was allways a mix between a private homepage and a professional musicians homepage. I tried my best to eliminate the first part now. If I have the time someday to run a private funhomepage again, I have the domain wolther.de for that ;). And even if some folks are complaining now about "losing the cool & easy private touch of the site" and missing (I think unneccessary) information, I think the new site is much cleaner and structured and more suiting it's actual purpose. So stop whining. To say it with the Bible: "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new", and it is great that way!

The site is far from being perfect. The layout sometimes freaks, especially on some Browsers. The more investigative guys amongst you will also have recognized, that not all possibilities to provoke errors on the site lead to a corresponding error message. But in general the site is safe, otherwise the few hours would have been enough time for my "russian hacker friends" to turn the site into a Viagra selling page. They are quite quick at this and they seem to love to try hacking my website.

The functionality of the site has been now reduced to the absolute minimum, to get the site online very quick. If you are missing one or the other thing, you will most probably find it back in a improved version during the next weeks. So please refrain from AT THIS TIME sending me loads of reports about missing stuff. Most probably I am allready at the job to bring it back. I plan a gigantic improvement regarding to the interactivity of the site. You will get a newsletter again and also a personal section called "MyAlionmind" or so, which will be, for example, very helpfull during sweepstakes etc.

Ok, so far the news. Have fun on the new alionsonny.com. I will now create a new alionsonny track. About time ;)

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!

New Project "alionsonny's Audio Arsenal"!

Yes, here is something really new for you, especially for the musicians amongst you who work in the field of digital audio production. Over the years, I did digital music production, I collected a huge collection of free VST Plugins and other free audio software. No, I don't talk about the illegal, virus infested stuff, but legal free software. Often I have benn asked by fellow musicians, to publish a list of all that free stuff with download URLs. I have done this various times on various forums, but now I found a way to make it all a lot easier. I created the Blog "alionsonny's Audio Arsenal" and will from now on post a presentation of at least one free VST or Audiotool per day. Today I started with the indispensable Triangle II VST Synthesizer Plugin. Simply visit the Blog, preferably on a daaily basis.

News from the Cimelium Project and more!

Yes, indeed a lot has happened and maybe some of you have recognized it, because the songs of the Alion Meditations series, which many of you liked have VANISHED... Attentive readers of this Blog will allready know why. Some time ago, I announced the project Cimelium, which has been brought to life as an independent musicproject for the genres Ambient, Chillout and Electronic Ethno. Now finally some steps have been done to finnish this plan:

1. No songs and videos are any longer available by the titles Meditation One to Meditation Nine. Instead they now have their correct names for the first album of Cimelium.
2. The songs are no longer listed on the alionsonny.com homepage.
3. There is a own humble little homepage for the Cimelium Project. Here, all friends of the more calm and chilling sounds find from now on all information about the progress of the project. There is also a nice little Cimelium Blog.

So far for the Cimelium project. What else? Because of the overwhelming unreliability of some musicians who smoke too much weed to work constantly and seriously at a project, I said BYE to the plan of turning alionmind records into a Weblabel for releasing sampler albums of rather unknown (Reggae-)Musicians. Sorry folks, I REALLY have better things to do than carrying your ass, heaving loads of work, just so you get some money in the end for your lazyness. I allready told the few people who seriously worked with me, that we will trod on on another path. But now, no more bad vibez, because it all has also a positive side: The alionmind records homepage has been completely re-designed to be from now on the nucleus of my own music projects. Currently the projects alionsonny, Cimelium and Willma Poppen are at home there.

There's another important thing I have to tell you regarding to alionmind records: Since quite a time I tell you that there will be a webshop where you will be able to buy my music and later on merchandising stuff. And because it would be very stupid to create a webshop for my currently 3 and counting music projects, it is a good idea to create that webshop for all projects at the alionmind records homepage.

Well, and then some people ask, why there is no progress at AlionLive Madeira. Folks: I don't want to tear myself apart between various projects and sometimes I simply don't to do certain stuff, but do something different. That's my own personal and beloved creative chaos. And currently I find no fun in cutting video, but in expanding my little website empire ;) But OF CAUSE I'm moving on with AlionLive Madeira. In the end I have to finnish this before the new AlionLive season starts, e.g. sun is shining and the weather is nice enough for some new adventures. So be sure: AlionLive Madeira goes on, and you aint seen nothing yet.

The new alionsonny Homepage is online!

For quite a while I promised my loyal fans that the somewhat aged alionsonny Homepage will get a major overhaul. And now the time has come! alionsonny.com has been completely new created. Currently the site is only available in english language, but this will change soon. The biggest, and for some of you most inconvinient change is, that the site is from now on no longer ad-free. To be honest, I do no longer want to be the only one who doesn't put ads on his site, while others generate a nice extra income by putting ads on their sites. The webspace doesn't pay itself and I am not a rich man. Didn't we talk not so long ago about the "generosity" of my listeners regarding to voluntary donations? ;) Well, and who doesn't want to listen, must live with the ads. In the near future I will offer a possibility to get the site ad-free for a moderate donation. Just wait and see...

Much of the new site will look familiar to you, but at some parts there have been quite some changes. Still you will not see anything of the biggest part of the changes, because most is below the surface. For example, I administered songs, videos and other media via the uncomfortable database administration interface in the past. Now I built a nice administrator interface for the website, which make it more convinient for me to get things on the site much easier and quicker. All the database functions have been completely freshly programmed and the site will run much quicker and smooth because of that. Ok, but what has changed for YOU? I'll briefly tell it to you, step by step:

Navigation
The navigation menu to access the various sections of the site has moved from the left to the top, below the banner. Here you also find now expandable submenus now. In the following I explain the sections accessible via the menu:

Welcome
This is where you end up if you type alionsonny.de or alionsonny.com into your browsers adress bar. This is the home page. This is has now a much cleaner layout. You can find here, as in the past an area with the news from the blog and the recent Twitter messages from me. These areas are now larger, because I expect you to use a screen resolution of 1024x768 pixels as the minimum standard. Below that, you find, as in the past, the latest video and an embedded player with ALL SONGS THAT I HAVE EVER RELEASED. And that's it in this section. Iplan to to add something BIG to this section in the near future, but I tell you about that, when it's finished ;)

alionsonny
Here you can find, now more compact, the facts about me. Here, not much has changed ... rather ... nothing ;)

Blog
Again, there is nothing new. Clicking on it brings you, as always, the blog where you are reading this.

Shop
Since many have asked how and where one can buy my music, in this section will be a shop soon. Currently you find there just a temporary solution. It explains to you how you can buy music during the time until the shop is finished.

Music
Here you find, as in the past, a musical overview, albums and songs. At this overview and the albums section nothing has really changed, but something has changed in the songs part. For song entries for which a music videos exist, a link is provided that leads directly to the music video. The biggest new feature is that you can now filter the songs on the "genre" field by music styles. So anyone who is interested in a particular style of music can now just select it and will only see songs of this musical style listed. So someone who loves techno music and doesn't like reggae has no longer have to click through dozens of reggae songs, folk songs and soundtrack style songs. The page navigation has been simplified. Above and below the table you find song now links which allow you to scroll to older or newer songs or to the oldest and newest songs.

Video
Here the most changes have been done. Now you do not only find my well-known music videos here, but also AlionLive and my graphic works from alionvisual.

Contact
There is the well-known contact section -> no change.

Terms
Since this site will have a lot more features, especially the shop and offer user registration in the future, it is time for some general rules.

And that's it for now. As I said, the most of the work has been done below the surface and I've also tinkered a lot with stuff which is the basis for the soon to come, much further innovations. I'll let you know if there is something new again.

Progress at the alionsonny webshop - complete redising of alionsonny.com

Yes, it all takes a bit longer than I expected. First I had not thought about some things and had to find solutions for a variety of obstacles, relating specifically the synchronization of the main site and shop. I honestly admit that I had thought of some things not at all so far, such as a safe way to use a single database for both sites. Now everything is conceptually clear and must "only" be implemented.

I wanted to build the shop based on the PHP class library of alionsonny.com so far. Why reinvent the wheel? When I was at the point of letting the shop take shape, I noticed that in the PHP-class collection, from the alionsonny.com over the years a lot of redundant code garbage has accumulated . This would ultimately lead to delays and confusion over and over again and make the whole anything but efficient.

For this reason I decided to make a blatant cut and redesign the class library based on my present knowledge and remove remnants of earlier days rigorously. This will make the code a lot more efficient, manageable and better. For this purpose it is necessary, to review each and every bit of code, just to see where it makes sense to make changes. Most likely a large part of the whole stuff will be kicked into trash and reprogrammed.

And while we are at reworking the classes for the shop, why not also give alionsonny.com a complete overhaul? Good idea! I have long thought about giving alionsonny.com a nicer appearance. Also, the CSS is pretty loaded with artifacts of past days and years and rather confusing. So that's just when you add something new all the time. At some point, quite simply a whole lot of stuff is inside, which is no longer either used or is redundant. So I will take a close look at just about everything from HTML to PHP code, CSS style sheets to the graphics and rework it.

Visitors to alionsonny.com I can reassure: It is not an "open-heart surgery.", because the whole thing is just too extensive. Instead, I will tinker with all the changes first here on my local development environment and then upload. So you'll most likely see nothing of the whole thing until I've finished it all. Then, one day, you will visit the site again and BOOOM: Everything will be new, nicer and better;)

The adventure of getting my free downloads off the web

Yes, it's done! There should be no free downloads of my music available online anymore. Well maybe, I missed one or the other, but I don't care. Der majority, especially the many songs I uploaded to various music upload sites myself, is gone. Some pages offered the possibility to convert the free downloads into pay-downloads and I did this wherever possible. But most of those sites want a quite big fee and because I do not accept anything below 50 cent as my share, the downloads are quite expensive there. So you better buy the downloads directly from me, because that's the cheapest way for you to get alionsonny music.

Like said, there's now no music of me available for free on the web. Try it yourself: A Google search for "alionsonny free download" just results in dead links, error messages or fakes. And here it is time for a serious warning: PLEASE do not download any EXE-files from websites, where they promise you free alionsonny music downloads! There's a russian company, which has dozens if not hundreds of websites under different names scattered across the web. And behind the "music download link", there's in fact a EXE-file. I tested it and my malwarescanner screamed in pain. So don't be fooled by folks telling you that it is a "free accesstool" which gives you access to free downloads. Well, actually I would not feel very sorry for people who are NOW trying to get my music for free and catch trojans, virusses etc., but I'm not as evil as you may think. But now you have bben warned and it is your own fault if you still try it.

Well, it was quite an adventure to get all those downloads off the web. As an example I want to name former site called Garageband. I uploaded some music there from 2004 to, I think so, 2006. Then I somehow forgot about it. While running thru my music upload bookmarks I ran across that old thing again. Garageband somehow got sold meanwhile to a site called ILike and I like again was somehow merged with Myspace. On all sites I tried to at least keep the possibility for people to stream (listen to) the music and only take down the ability to download for free. But at that former Garageband and now ILike site I had no choice. Because the admin tool was only half functional, I had to delete all the songs there completely. Well after that I would have liked to get rid of the now completely useless ILike account. But to my surprise the "Delete Account" link took me to the page of Myspace where I could delete my Myspace account. And at this stage I didn't want to do that. But soon after, that should change. So I was at the Myspace account administration page and thought, that it would be a great idea to deactivate the free downloads of songs I had uploaded to Myspace. But to my surprise, Myspace no longer has the possibility to make songs available for streaming only. If you upload music to Myspace, you are forced to give it all away for free. I didn't find that very funny, especially as Myspace NEVER informed me about this serious change. So I simply canceled my Myspace account while I was at deleting stupid useless shit. And I hoped that the stupid useless ILike page (powered by Myspace Music) would now also vanish automatically, but it still was there after my Myspace page was allready toast. So I put a heavy rant on the page instead of my artist biography and uploaded a "Fuck You"-finger as the artist picture. So I hope that if some day somebody respomsible stumbles across this Web 2.0 ruin, he will kill that useless account.

But that was just the most prominent case of a Web 2.0 ruin or abandonned website. On countless sites the only thing I could do was just take down all stuff, because the sites had become abandonned, not longer administrated website ruins, where the admintools have been taken over by kiddie hackers, who have their, sometimes cruel, fun there. Some of the sites were hijacked and wrecked so much, that they distributed trojans, virusses and other flavors of malware in big discount family packs. Good if you only go on such pages well prepared with security features enabled. Still I let my virusscanner do a full system scan after it all.

Well, but in the end only one thing really counts: Mission accomplished. Now I can really start building the webshop for you.

All music is available for listening again!

It is done! Unfortunately Archive.org deleted all my music from their Servers, instead of disabling downloads only, as I told you in the last blog posting. Now I found a quick and efficient solution to make the songs available for listening again. Since 2004 I use Soundclick.com. No free downloads are available there now, but Soundclick offers songplayers for single songs and also for my complete song catalogue embeddable into websites. On the music summary page I now embedded a player containing my whole backcatalogue of 163 songs. You can listen all songs in one list there. Additionally all 163 songs are available for listening from my songlist on alionsonny.com now.
On Soundclick you can also buy songdownloads for 0.75 US Dollars of which 0.52 US Cents go to my account. I want to offer songdownloads in my own shop for 0.50 US Cents or 0.50 Euro Cents in the future. But if you do not want or cannot wait you can now buy them on Soundclick, as it will take some time until my own shop will be available.

Sorry, all music offline currently!

I'm sorry to inform you, that not just not music is any longer availble on this site for download, but also all song streaming/listening is not possible anymore. This means basically, that there's no music on alionsonny.de/alionsonny.com anymore.
In the past I hosted all my music on archive.org. All downloads & streams came from there. Bacause of my decision to not give away my music for free anymore, I asked the folks at archive.org, to make my music streamable only and remove the download links. Obviously the folks at archive.org were angry about my decision and informed me that all my stuff has been removed completely.
So i am very sorry, that the music is now not even available for listening. I couldn't foresee the harsh reaction of the folks at archive.org on my decision to no longer allow unlimited downloads.
I promise that I will find a solution which will make it possible for you to listen to my music soon. Just give me a bit of time to find a solution. If anybody out there has a bit of webspace available for about 150 to 200 MP3s, please get in touch with me. I'm currently busy building the new musicshop, so it may take a bit of time for me to get it all up and running again. Sorry for any inconviniences.

Progress at alionsonny.com / alionsonny.de

Ok, not really much has happened. I fixed some stuff at the database backend which bothered me since quite a time. One of the most annoying things has been fixed also. I regularly got complaints, mostly by idiots who wanted to show how "smart" they think they are. Why I think this? Because those complains came mostly as replies to forum posts I wrote some idiots didn't like so much. They came like "hey, before you say anything, why not fix your buggy website" etc.
It was not really a big thing, because most people were able to view the website without a problem, including me. Still those folks showed me sometimes screenshots etc. and first I thought it was a browser specific problem, eventhough I wondered how a browser specific problem could cause PHP or MySQL errors. Yesterday a friendly person gave me a hint in the right direction. He said, that the trouble happens, if the site is browsed by entering ,for example, alionsonny.com without the www. part. From that moment on I pretty much knew where the error was caused. But seriously: I never browsed a website without entering the www. part. So to make it short: That strange error should be fixed now. If you find any more errors, glitches, bugs or other ugly stuff, please let me know.
I allready know about the trashed CSS layout on the song detail pages. I'll fix that next.

Updates and work at alionsonny.com

First I want to apologize to the visitors and users of alionsonny.com for som inconviniences, which occured during the past weeks. Somehow the songlist was not updated correctly, and because of that my entry for the Leah Rosier Remix Contest aswell as my Teddybears cover "Punkrocker" did not appear. Somehow that had to do with some databasetable and I don't want to bore you with technical details. This should be fixed now. I took the opportunity to work a bit further at the website. Since quite a time there are some not so nice problems with the site, which are actually quite serious security leaks in conclusion with our all the time beloved hackers. I am not talking about real and serious hackers here, but rather about so called script kiddies who feel very cool, if they manage it to break into a private website and fuck something up. So I fixed some fat problems connected to the main database core classes, which caused at least some ugly PHP error messages.
Ok, and during the next weeks I will fix some minor problems, which for example fuck up the CSS regularly. And I will extend the website. Yes, right: There wil be NEW STUFF on alionsonny.com. I seriously think about implementing optional registration for user accounts, to supply, for example a newsletter for REAL fans. Let me surprise you!
I'll close this posting with apologies upfront for any inconviniences which may occur as result of the work at alionsonny.com. It is no "work at the open heart of the site", because I have a quite good development environment here, which allows me to test the modules before I put them online. But minor errors and bugs are allways possible. I ask you explicitly, to send me mails if you come across stuff which doesn't work or look like it should over a longer period of time. That way I eventually get to know about errors which I did not notice. Thanks in advance for your patience and help!

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!

alionsonny.com under construction!

This is to inform you about the fact that alionsonny.com (and now alionsonny.de) will be under heavy construction for several hours. As this will be an "open heart surgery", it is most likely that you'll experience strange, weird and maybe funny effects which are related to the reconstruction. So why is it? I am happy to announce that I got the alionsonny.de-domain, which will be now a starting page for all german speaking people to the alionsonny-website. My provider upgraded my webpackage without charging me more cash and included are 4 four additional domains. I will have now to change the language dfriven part of the websites underlying system to make it all work. I'll also take this as an opportunity to improve some of the php-code and site features. Stay tuned and bear with me in the times of change.

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.

I have been very lazy recently...

... in updating my homepage and various other places on the web. I was not lazy in making music tho. Two new songs were released since my last update of this site:

1. A new song for the "Alion Soundtrack" has been published a while ago. The title is "The River Valley" and, as hopefully everybody can imagine, this song shall be played while exploring a idyllic river valley.

The River Valley (Alion OST)
LISTEN -- DOWNLOAD

2. It was about time for the release of a new "reggaelike" song. Listeners told me that this is probably is the best song I ever published in the "reggaelike" segment. As topic of the song I have chosen the classic spy movie topic this time. So here's the song:

Special Agent Jones and the case of the Saphire Cross
LISTEN -- DOWNLOAD

So what was it which kept me from updating my homepage, blog and lots of other stuff? Well, you know me and somtimes I do not find some stuff too important :p Ok, some things are not going the way they should currently here, but I don't want to bother you with my problems. ;)

Well, that's it for now. Much stuff to update. Let's go