I'm so sorry to read about this; completely not cool. But... Sadly the reality. Music is for some reason considered "disposable" and I am not sure why. I mean, every now and then we get a new player/band/artist that totally revolutionizes the appearance of the industry, shakes the whole thing up but fundamentally, the business model has stayed the same. I mean what IS the value of a 3 minute composition, performed, mixed, mastered and presented? Looks like it's value is about $1.00 as per itunes.

Alain, I can't believe that those guys won't at the very least give you guys credit. A link. Something. That sort of thing blows me away.

I have spent the last 7 months doing nothing but playing music to earn my living; It ain't easy. Time management, practice, organization, set up/tear down etc etc. Composition and recording isn't something I do that makes me money, but it does get me gigs.

I found a guy who had bought about 10,000 1GB USB drives as a promotion; the company providing the drives screwed up and forgot to put his logo on them. He kept them, but had to re-order. I did some drafting work for him (Solid-works flat patterns to be plasma cut and then Bent via Brake) (About 5 minutes of my time) and he gave me all 10,000 of the drives.

I got some small decals for the drive with my name and contact info on it. I also made a website, but put it on the drive with links and stuff to a bunch of music and videos (Covers, Originals) more contact info, information, photos etc. Works like a charm, they get me gigs, the gigs get me paid.

Maybe Alain, there is some way you can manipulate his 'views' and divert some of those people to your own pages? Is there any way you could contact the people who have watched and ask them to like/watch/subscribe to your page as well?

A long shot perhaps...

Life is so strange sometimes. You read my story here and we can see it's really tough to be paid. But...I can't believe it. A guy contacted me in April (on Facebook) to ask me if I were Alain Auclair, musician, living...well a lot of private informations and on his side he was a Socan employee. These informations were not going to far in my private life and it was ok to answer these. And...I forgot about this...till yesterday morning. I had a check from this Socan...1,175$ Canadians. What? More than a thousand bucks? So, I went to the website of the Socan and it was difficult for me to log in. I was not thinking anymore about this guy and I finally found this conversation we had in April. I wrote to him and he answered me right away and gave me a phone number to fix everything. I lived in Dominican Republic for about 10 years between 2002 and 2012. These people were looking for me since 2009 because some royalites were due to me and I didn't have any adress in Canada at this time. These songs were composed in the early '90's and I registered them in '98 at the Socan. After I understood how it was working, I've noticed that my music was played in Russia, Vietnam and Singapour. Isn't it crazy? Because of that, I know exactly what I need to do for the other songs I composed and many of them are on different website for free. But...if someone use them, Socan can receive royalties and then they pay me. I'm not sure about how many I have but I guess it's close to 70...maybe more. I just need to declare them to the Socan and see in the future if this music is played or not. Strange...really strange story. I already put the name of this song used by this website which is using my piano playing and where there is over than 1,488,000 today...we never know...At least a positive ending till now.

Lol sometimes it works out, and other times the best we can hope for is to perhaps leverage the success other people have had with our work, eh?

Ahhh well. Back to practice I go!