Entertainment

The madness has begun! I’m here in Berlin at the studio, preparing for my first live show, and this week is of course very crazy. For me especially, because I have to do a LOT of traveling between the practice days; I’ll be rehearsing today, then tomorrow I’m off to my New Years Eve gig in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Very exciting, since I’ve never been to Dubai before. But I digress… Today was the first rehearsal of my live show song with the TVOG band. The band has gotten bigger, with background vocalists, horns, and for some songs there are live strings. The studio is also bigger. Much bigger. The stage is something I’ve never seen before. Amazing! From a technical standpoint, everything is as close to perfect as I have...

This turned out to be an extremely eventful week, not only because of the long-awaited release of my new album, but also because I learned a lesson on just how powerful (and intimidating) social networking can really be, and how difficult it is to “sell” yourself online. I’ve always been fascinated by how people use social networks to get attention and build awareness. Although I’ve been part of the “social web” since 2006 (when I created my first MySpace profile), I never really “got” social networking; especially the concept of taking something viral. As a musician, I understood that I needed the Web nowadays to make a name for myself, but I never understood how, nor did I realize how much time and effort went into making that possible....