It always amazes me to see how much shameless people can become when it comes down to money... It’s like when money is there, nothing else matters – pride, honesty or even friendship is instantly sidelined – it just doesn’t matter anymore, only the potential gain does.

I wonder if they realize how sick they look with greed in their eyes, ready to stab anyone in the back just to grab some $$$. In one sense it is quite amusing to observe people in this situation, they always look the same: avoiding eye contact and discussion, trying to cowardly walk away as fast as they can... And no matter the amount - be it 10€ or 10 Millions – it’s always the same dance.

The irony is that when people play this game on me, I actually feel sorry for them more than angry; sorry to see them falling so low for something which is nothing but a simple piece paper – when it’s not only a number in a computer.

I believe we all have a purpose and everybody has a different set of lessons to learn from this life. Avoiding the temptation of greed is a one of them, a very important one. So better start now and avoid yourself the pain in the future – because life WILL throw it at you in one way or another, eventually.

This whole MegaUpload thing is starting to look really ridiculous... And to add more, artists saying “that was the day they were all waiting for” or that “they suffer so much from illegal downloads”... LOL?

Those types of statements really show the mentality of a certain segment of the industry; and at which extent they take their audience for granted. For them it is so OBVIOUS that people want to get their content (because it is so good!).

The music industry today is an over flooded market where there is MUCH MORE supply than demand, so it is really not at all obvious that people will want the content of artist x or y. In fact it is totally against the odds and should be considered like a “privilege” to the artist that somebody will show interest in their content (in such market conditions).

The sole fact to get people’s attention is already a victory for an artist or a record label, it’s the bigger part of the work. Rest is to find out how to monetize that interaction. As Gabe Newell from Valve puts it: “The key isn't to stop piracy, because piracy will never stop. The key is to provide a better service than the pirates and bring them on over to your service.”

And I couldn’t agree more, that’s what I have been doing since 2006 with Frozenforce and I have really no problems at all with “piracy” like they call it...

But coming back on the Megaupload case, other aspects are far from being funny. All I see is a businessman who got his business taken down and arrested without any trial, on the basis of funny charges like “money laundering”, “global criminal conspiracy” (they even refer to his company as the “mega conspiracy”) and the list goes on... What happened to “Innocent until proven guilty”?

In my country, murderers, dangerous criminals and drug dealers can almost operate freely without any disturbance from the legal system (and the police don’t even bother anymore, they’ll get released shortly after anyway – if at all they get charged)... But this man who simply operates his company and do not seem to be particularly dangerous - will be arrested by a giant police raid with helicopters and everything?

I’m not saying copyright infringement is a good thing. But come on, there are more important problems in this world than shutting down an online file-hosting company...

And what about Youtube and all other websites based on the User Generated Content business model? They still make A LOT of money out of millions of un-claimed copyrighted materials (from small indie artists for example)...

There is nothing so black and white, but a lot of grey...

Also see this interesting article, another side of the story...

Since a few months I am receiving emails of people complaining that they don’t see the updates from my page in their feed; I didn’t took it too seriously at first, but after some time I decided to run some experiment and check what was actually happening…

We found out that some people indeed do not receive the updates; they are just nowhere to be found in their feed.  We have contacted Facebook about this matter and we have been told that “they are working on a new algorithm which MAY be the cause of the problem” but in the meantime we should continue posting “engaging content” on the site...

In fact over the course of one year we have seen the average number of view per post drop by a factor of 30, although the number of subscribers has almost doubled (now 22,000+) – how is that logic?
Another interesting fact is that we have noticed a very sudden drop immediately after trying out a “Sponsored Story” (it’s a paid campaign: we actually pay Facebook to get more exposure on a specific content). Maybe it’s just a coincidence, or is it some sort of incentive to purchase more advertising?

I have also discussed with other artists and to my surprise it seems there are actually a lot of people with the same problem. That’s very frustrating to see people who have willingly subscribed to receive updates and not getting them…

On a more personal note, I always wondered why I never see any updates from some long time friends, while I keep on getting every single status post of some others at the top of my feed… Is Facebook trying to determine which content is more interesting for us? What do you think?

So I’d like to encourage you to check regularly and rely more on my official website to stay up to dates with what’s going on… You can also subscribe to the newsletter and we will send you an email every time a new release is available (or for any other significant event).

I’d like to wish all of you a wonderful and prosperous New Year 2012! I would also like thank everybody who have supported me this year, please know I am very grateful of your support.

And last but not the least, a big thanks to all of you who have taken a little bit of your time to check out my music – because at the end of the day - what makes me really happy is to see people from so much different countries and cultures enjoying my music; that’s really an amazing feeling.

Happy New Year!