The optimism that was evident before the European Song Contest turned to despair, as Alex Swings, Oscar Sings failed to catch the imagination of the Europeans and the Jury, leaving Germany wondering what had gone wrong, and prompting the biggest tabloid to say “What has Europe got against us?”

Sometimes I think Germany hasn’t understood what this competition is all about.

The vocalist comes from California, sings english: What’s German about that?
The song is a Swing number: What’s German about that, what’s even european about that?
The producer, Alex Christensen, is European and German, and is a successful producer at that. But one word sort of sums him up: Commerce. And Germany have enough of that…

And after all the hype surrounding Dita von Teese, the European Broadcasting Union forbid her strip and she ended up just doing nothing in particular – but reputedly got 60000 Euros in the process… what has she got to do with Germany, Europe, Music?

Sure it hurts a nation like Germany when they only see the heels of countries like Azerbaijan and Estonia, but that’s the way it goes if you don’t do your homework

When I first read that the German GEMA was blocking youtube, I thought … yeah right, April Fools Day. Especially as all music videos I looked for were right in their place. The only discernable difference I could see was that the whole page was upside down.

But, a couple of days later, it appears that GEMA has indeed blocked videos, but here’s the clou. They have only blocked official videos from artists that have officially been uploaded. All the other stuff, which is probably in excess of 75% I should think, is still there and visible.

Its all about money of course. GEMA wants more money for its artists and is asking youtube to give GEMA information about how many times a video is being viewed. Youtube refuses of course. By the way, we are reportedly talking about 1 (Euro) Cent per view. If I did something similar I would have to pay more than 20 Cents…

So here we are now with a situation where the legal videos have been banned, but its OK to watch the illegal ones. Strange carryings on indeed. And at the end of the day, its the artists that are suffering.