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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!
Check out Sharing the Groove as well for BitTorrent downloads of Spring tours!
...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.
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.
British Phonographic Society
Boy did I read that wrong the first time.
RegardselFarto
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.
the broadcaster of pop music for our sceptered isle
I fail to believe that this poster is British. We have lots of pop music stations.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
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.
Likewise, Clear Channel owns a lot of outdoor billboards here in the USA. Usually, they like to collect billboards in the same cities that they own radio stations so that the same sales team can sell both to the same customers in a joint presentation.
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!
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!
"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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I am very happy to pay my TV license fee to fund the BBC. Long live the BBC!