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UK To Get Music Download Chart
theOtherFool writes "The Observer reported today that BBC Radio One is to broadcast a chart of legally downloaded music. This is a big deal because the station is the broadcaster of pop music for our sceptered isle; it legitimises downloading and seems to show that the industry (or at least the BPI, our equivalent of the RIAA) is starting to accept it, rather than ignoring it and hoping it might go away."
...why are they not making a chart of legal FREE downloads? The BBC _should_ have no comercial intrest in labels at all, and they should have no influence over it because it's funded by the british public. Radio 1(& 2 for older people) have a huge percentage of the listeners here (almost certainly way over 50%, infact pretty much everything non-BBC is local/regional radio).
If they did this and were still broadcasting quality it could be amazing.
Here's one way to think about a mega-company...
Clear Channel owns tons of radio stations. Clear Channel also operates a concert promotion arm as well. Concert singers don't exactly need album sales as much as they need radio play...
So maybe CC should get into the business of finding artists and signing them to a concert deal before they even have a recording deal. Give them a couple recording sessions to create a few radio-ready singles... and off they go. CC can make money with no need for the CD to be in wide release. In fact, give the MP3s away... it just serves to promote the artist's concerts.
Although a "p2p buzz" chart apparently doesn't yet exist, once it does, you can bet the labels will be manipulating it by having paid agents download the latest crap to generate buzz.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Creative Commons hit parade? Or a popularity rating for music licensed as free? By this I mean is there any "Free music hit chart" or "By Category chart" on a website anywhere?
Of course this would be much harder to implement when compared to the manipulated radio hit charts influenced by the "Big Music" corporations, but it would be really nice to know this information.
As it is, I find it extremely difficult to find good music on the 'net as these independant groups just don't have the resources to to buy advertising or commercial media time to target their audiences, the big music corps have basically got every major entertainment medium sewn up tight.
So it'll now be even cheaper and easier for record promoters to bulk buy singles to up their chart positions like they regularly do with existing formats.
They wanted illegal downloads to go away. I don't the industry wants to kill off downloads in general. It actually saves them money since it's on demand sales, they don't have to try and guess how many copies to produce and have stocks sitting around on shelves.
What they really wanted though was to invent all the technology themselves and release it with a big "wow", trouble is others got there first and it looks like they are just jumping on the bandwagon.
Now if they could also bring back the ogg vorbis audio streams they were experimenting with at one point, I would be awfully happy. At the moment there is no choice but to use the proprietary Real Audio, and even though there is a good player for UNIX it still costs the BBC money, when they could go the free route with ogg vorbis and make customers happier too!
Time to extract your head from your Corrs album ridden middle manager Vauxhall Vectra company car and face facts.
Radio 2's management isn't dumb enough to fire the Radio Caroline DJ's Infact, they've picked a few of 'em up over the years
Radio 1 is supposed to represent what's new or what's cutting edge. Crusties like Tony Blackburn would hardly help this cause these days. Even the middle-aged humorists of Mark and Lard have been chucked off.
Radio 2's got Steve Wright
And? Steve Wright is ideal for Radio 2's audience, Radio 1 is not a middle aged radio station for people who wear slippers.
Radio 2 has Waay better content. Aside from a wider range of better music than 1, 2 also has the wonder that is Jammin, It's Been A Bad Week and the like.
The rest of your arguments are sure hallmarks of someone who has never listened to Radio 1 except for 9am - 5pm.
Radio 1's content variety is way beyond that of Radio 2. Even if you took John Peel's shows on their own, there's a bigger variety of music than Radio 2 will play all week. Radio 1 covers jazz very extensively, with Gilles Peterson. Peel covers everything from soul and early 20th century 78s to jungle and thrash metal. The Radio 1 Rock Show covers the full rock gamut. Westwood, while annoying, covers rap and hip-hop. Indian music (bhangra, etc) is well covered by Friction and Nihal. Grooverider, Fergie and the DJ crews cover trance, techno and drum'n'bass.
Admittedly, Radio 2 does have good shows where the DJ is allowed to cut loose on his own CD collection, and fun to listen to they are.. but it's absurd to claim Radio 2 has a wider selection of music than Radio 1. The only genre Radio 1 is missing is classical, and we have the fine Radio 3 or Classic FM for that!
Radio 2 is a safe outpost for those who don't want their heads done in by Radio 1's dreckish pop and R&B output all day, and who want safe pedestrian inoffensive humour from people closer to their own age. Radio 2 is also the king of daytime adult contemporary, and generic MOR (The Corrs, Norah Jones, Will Young).. and it's good at it.. but it ain't variety.
"This is a big deal because the station is the broadcaster of pop music for our sceptered isle; it legitimises downloading and seems to show that the industry (or at least the BPI, our equivalent of the RIAA) is starting to accept it, rather than ignoring it and hoping it might go away."
Um, presumably this initiative is backed to the hilt by the BPI. It's a chart of *legal* (as in, the recording industry gets a cut) downloads. It's another of their completely ineffectual attempts to promote the over-priced and under-featured UK online music stores.
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