alionmind News April 2017 - alionmind is conquering the world with music!

Strong statement, right? Hello first, and I apologize for the long time of silence. As you might have noticed, 2015 to 2017 was not a great time for the house of alionmind. Well, since everything is largely getting back to normal, I would like to at least post the monthly alionmind news in time. But since there is still a lot to be done on the way to "normality", I can not guarantee anything. Long preface. what's new?

Sales are going up steeply 
First of all, I would like to proudly announce, that the products from the house of alionmind now sell in 51 countries around the globe. A few days ago, I got the final sales statement for February 2017 from my distributor and it's the most revenue-generating month since alionmind records exists. I bet, that now you are interested in a few details. No, I'm not going to mention any amount of money. This is business secrecy ... for reasons. But I can tell you where the most was sold / streamed. Let's start with the number of sales in the various countries:

United States	17,6%
Japan	8,8%
France, Germany	7,4% (each)
Mexico	6,7%
Brazil, United Kingdom	4,6% (each)
Argentina	3,9%
Chile	3,2%
Hungary	2,4%
Canada, Philippines	2,1% (each)
Spain, Sweden	1,8% (each)
Finland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Russia	1,4% (each)
Austria, Australia, Belgium, Slovakia, Turkey	1,0% (each)
Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, South Africa, Switzerland	0,7% (each)

The remaining 5.9% (rounding errors reserved) are distributed between Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Greece, Guatemala, Iceland, India, Latvia, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Singapore, Ukraine and Uruguay. I think I must probably start promoting more in these countries ;). But you see: Almost the whole world now listens to alionmind music.

How about the distribution of sales across the 3 music projects? Here we go:

alionsonny 18,3%
Cimelium 15.0%
Willma Poppen 66.7%

 As you can see, Willma Poppen has left the previous bestseller Cimelium far behind. I am astonished about this. I had not expected the success of the latest Willma Poppen album. What makes me particularly astonished is that a large part of the sales of Willma Poppen (about 70%) are achieved by a single title on the album "Willma im Wunderland". It is the title "RaumZeit", which many people around the planet seem to like.

Two new albums released since the last post 
 Since the last post on this blog was created in September 2015, two released albums were not mentioned here. Which? As I already told above, the second album by Willma Poppen "Willma im Wunderland" is available and is currently by far the absolute bestseller in the alionmind portfolio. The album is, as always, available on all known sites for music sales, e.g. on iTunes (CLICK!) And GooglePlay (CLICK!). Streaming on Spotify (CLICK!) is of course also possible. If you prefer to buy your music somewhere else, just search for "Willma im Wunderland" at the service of your choice.

Also, since February 2017, the second album of Cimelium "Ad Hominem" is available. Attention: This is a pretty dark album, as the Cimelium fans, as far as I've noticed, like it. You also get this album on all music sites on the web, e.g. on iTunes (CLICK!) and GooglePlay (CLICK!). Also the Spotify (CLICK!) link is not missing here.

Cimelium's album "Madeira" 
Yes, what about that one? I had to stop working on this album at the end of 2015, because of many unpleasant events, shortly before completion and I started working again at it in March. However, both my quality requirements and my way of working have now drastically changed, so I can not just complete the whole thing quickly. Nevertheless, I am confident that the release is only a matter of days. However, as I will mention in the next sections, I have also to bring a few other things back to life. So it can also be a metter of weeks. Let's see...

AlionLive? 
Yes, the AlionLive channel is, as my other video channels, now abandoned for over a year. This is to change very soon. Then you finally get the last episode of "AlionLive - Spring in Madeira". After that, I have a nice long series about a bike trip to the North Sea for you, a series about a trip to Madeira in 2015 and also a small series on a trip to Cyprus, from which I returned yesterday. There is much to catch up.

Websites?
Yes, the websites of alionmind records and the 3 music projects are still offline. I have a lot of somewhat time-intensive stuff on my to-do list before I can relaunch those websites.

So, this was a very nice block text. This was absolutely necessary after such a long time of silence. As mentioned above, I will do my best to provide you monthly with the latest news from now on. On Facebook, you could get the latest news all the time. But there are still many, who do not like Facebook and Co. And these folks should also be provided with the latest events around alionmind. For this time, I say goodbye until next time.

alionmind News March 11, 2015

The news this time are, once again, that there is actually no news. Well, not really, because even though nothing new has been released, a lot has happened "in the background". And that will soon end the "lean period".

As announced, I firstonce generally stopped the work on video projects in order to fully concentrate on the release of the Willma Poppen album "Willma im Wunderland". And regarding to this, contrary to the first try, I take my time. I should already know that it is not particularly fruitful, but rather ends terribly, when I put myself under too much pressure actually ;).

So what actually happened regarding to Willma Poppen album then? For this I need (or I want) to tell you about my approach to the release of an album. You hopefully know all those pre-release versions that I upload to SoundCloud. These are more or less elaborate song ideas. They are sometimes closer to and sometimes a little farther from the final release versions. Generally I assume that corrections to both structure (composition / arrangement) and the mix have to be made. And that's what happens first when all the tracks are ready for an album in the pre-release version. In general then for each track the following steps are taken:

1. Create a final composition / a definitive arrangement. Here, all parts of the song are again placed under the microscope, imperfections are repaired, some things get improved and generally a version gets completed, that I regard as suitable for publication, regarding to the structure.
2. Export all mixer channels (dry and without compression) at 192 kHz sample rate in WaveAudio at 32 bit float resolution.
3. Import the audio tracks in a project (the mix) with exactly the same mixer channels and effects. For short: The generators, such as Synthesizers, are replaced by rendered versions in WaveAudio.
4. Now I mix the different channels, so that I get a good mix peaking at -6 dBFS. This mix is ​​rendered as a so-called. PreMaster in 192 kHz WaveAudio in 32-bit float, of course without any compression.
5. This PreMaster is imported into a completely new project. There I am doing what I call mastering. The result is then the final release version.

So far, so good ... How far am I with the 13 songs for the album? It may sound just like a little, but currently I have the final composition / the final arrangement ready for almost half of the tracks. For each of those tracks I have already exported each mixer track and created an approximate, but not finished, mix version. Not a single track is "mastered" yet. Regarding to this I must say, however, that a good mix reduces mastering almost to the task of increasing the volume to peak at 0 dbfs. So probably for many of the tracks, there's not much to do at the mastering stage.

Why does it take so long? As I said, I take my time and as I said, creating a good mix simplifies everything. So I currently put a lot of emphasis on that the arrangement almost delivers a good mix. Furthermore, I have experienced unpleasant surprises when I opened the project files of some of the older tracks and had to do some unexpected work in creating the final composition / arrangement of the tracks.

Well, and so that this blog post does not entirely come without sound and images, I embed 2 excerpts of the progress at the end as a small video. Well, at the moment this is all what I can give you. I would say that in one month it all will look better :D