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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."
Radio stations in the U.S. have long used statistics from ("illegal") P2P downloading services to influence what they play. Some have admitted it publicly. I think the industry is far more in bed with the "illegal" downloading services then they, or the RIAA would like to admit.
They can start their list of legally downloadable music right here. I suggest you support the freedom of music!
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Because I don't think there's any third-party service that can come up with reliable numbers of downloads of free songs... at least with iTunes or Napster 2.0 there's a man in the middle keeping a score.
It'd also mean that the broadcasters would have to do the work of deciding who's listenable and who's not. Then again, Simon Cowell does Pop Idol over there in the same format as American Idol here.
OK, so this is a bit of a shameless plug, but as far as we know, ours is the only chart which actually represents what users are listening to. We were quite interested to see this news in the papers on Tuesday.
The Audioscrobbler Charts show what people are actually listening to - not what they're illegally downloading, not what they're buying, but what they're actually playing.
So yeah, our demographic is quite skewed, and we're having trouble keeping up with current load, but we're working hard on both of those things this summer.
BBC Radio 1 is shocking in terms of commercial interests. They give heavy control of their rap and hip-hop output to the DJ Tim Westwood who has a contract with Def Jam records and shows very clear bias towards their artists see here for a random recent one worth noting Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam are one and the same.
sig free since 1993
To see how this affects the crap that the music industry produces.
Imagine it if the chart is not tampered with (not going to happen really is it) - we will see lots of people purchasing old songs I think rather than buying millions of copies of the latest manufactured crap.
I wonder how they will fiddle the chart? Repeated downloads by representatives of an artist or record company could be tracked by account / IP etc.
It will be interesting to see how the content produced by the industry alters as a result of better stats. I wonder if they will start data mining the songs to see what does and doesnt work and what people buy.
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the station is the broadcaster of pop music for our sceptered isle
Bollocks is it! Radio 1 is the redheaded-inbred-bastard-stepchild of the BBC radio family. Radio 2 OWNS it in every way.
1)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.
2)Radio 2's got Steve Wright
3)Radio 2 has managed to retain a single GOOD (i.e. most listened-to) morning presenter(Terry Wogan), unlike the series of gibbering retards that 1 has gone through (Chris Evans etc etc)
4)Radio 1's premier retard, Chris "Chrispy Boils" Moyles is so untalented that no only does he have to surround himself with an entourage of syncophants in order to produce a single show's worth of content, but he's been knows to steal content used by Ian Collins, the Talk Radio presenter, who, coincidentally, happens to be doing his show about the time that Moyles would be going to work.
5)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.
6)When I spend all day listening to 2, I don't hear the same song more than once per-presenter, and even then it's "packed" in a wide variety of different stuff. 1 on the other hand, when I have been forced to listen to it, is to repetitive that I could quite literally set my clock by it - Approx 5 PM Thursday, "handbags and gladrags", for the 4/5th time that day.(This is a year or so ago mind, schedules will have changed)
In summation, just 'cos it broadcasts the charts doesn't make 1 better by any means. It's the station of Bass-tards, white-kids-who-wanna-be-ghetto, people who are so mortally brain damaged to think Chris Moyles is funny and 40 year old who think they're 25 (Yes, You! My Ex-Employer! This Means You, you Faith-Hill Listening PRAT!)
The only things Radio 1 broadcasts to our "sceptered isle" is FAR, FAR TOO MANY BASS FREQUENCIES (is your colon vibrating yet?), the inane ravings of presenters so un-talented that no other station would touch them with a bargepole and so much Forced-Bling-Culture even this highly ecclectic listener feels like slitting my wrists to get away from it. (Nothing against people who Bling naturally, but people who put it on as a show shoud be pushed through a cheesewire mesh arse-first.)
Oh yeah, and in case anyone thinks of replying along the lines of "shuttup kid", I remember when this was all fie....er....when radio 5 played music!
I am very happy to pay my TV license fee to fund the BBC. Long live the BBC!