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Facebook Campaign Decides UK Christmas Music Charts
uglyduckling writes "A grassroots Facebook campaign has pushed the 1990s Rage Against the Machine song 'Killing in the Name Of' to the top of the British music charts for Christmas. The campaign was planned to prevent the X-Factor winner from charting Christmas number one, as has been the case for the past four years. It was supposedly a kick against the commercialism of Christmas and commercial dominance in the music scene, although Rage and the X-Factor winner Joe McElderry were actually signed to the same label. Despite this minor detail, it's interesting to note that this is the first song to reach the number one spot through downloads alone in the UK, and is a testament to the organizational power of social networking sites like Facebook. The Facebook group also asked for donations to charity, and has raised £70,000 for the homeless charity Shelter."
I am amazed that so many people are willing to vote for X-Factor and who should be no1 in the Christmas charts but will not vote for who runs the UK!
That's like totally horrifying.
At least protest for a something worthwhile - e.g. against clause 11 of the "Digital Economy Bill"http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldbills/001/10001.13-19.html Essentially gives Lord Mandelson complete control of what is published on Internet and unrivalled power and "interpretation" of copyright law.
You can join petitions here: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/list/open?cat=758
Then again Simon Cowell wants to "X-Factor" politics http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1236002/The-Politics-Factor-Simon-Cowell-unveils-plan-launch-election-debate-show.html This mentality scares the crap out of me!
Actually the Xfactor-bot's song sold 100,000 less than last year's winner did, who did secure the Xmas no1 spot. So to say it has increased Cowell's profits is wrong. It was a win-win for Sony though. And the BPI, who saw several hundred thousand people legally download a song for the first time (and paid for it!)
I stand corrected and good for them!
Firstly, you should at least google "Rage Against The Machine" before saying something so incredibly ignorant. Secondly, what the protest group was trying to do was to stop some bland, middle-of-the-road, one-hit-wonder from getting #1 when it should be going to someone who at least has the where-with-all to write their own goddamn songs. Your "mass marketing" straw man no place here.
Im in the UK and I bought 6 copies of Killing in the Name. It was not about "sticking it to the man"(I'm 37 for christ's sake). Nor do I give two shits that Sony is making money off of it. I don;t give a fuck what Simon Cowell thinks of anything. I just wanted Killing in the Name to be number one at christmas. I wanted something other than the bland, synthesised crap that we get as a christmas number 1 these last few years. This is not a political statment. Please try to understand that.
Setting aside our obvious differences in musical taste, you're wrong. There's no "instead", both acts sold lots of records and RATM sold around 500,000. I doubt that the people buying "Killing in the name" would ever have bought the X-factor single instead.
The other end result of course is that the Facebook group raised £70k for charity, and RATM are now pledging to donate the profits from sales of the record to charity too, something which I highly doubt Joe McElderberry, X-Factor winner, will do.
You might be right... but I think this requires some examination. The BPI are the UK equivalent of the RIAA. They similarly earn their crust by representing studios against things like copyright infringement. Now people buying music from these studios means that the BPI's paymasters have more money and some of that money might roll downhill. But like the RIAA, the BPI make capital out of scaring the studios with the spectre of piracy. Two things happen when people buy music as a pure download. Firstly, they're a counter to the pirates that take without paying, thus they show some honesty in the target audience meaning piracy seems less threatening than it otherwise would. Secondly, it supports and promotes a distribution model that doesn't require a lot of capital or risk to get involved in, thus opening up the market to smaller studios and even artists marketing themselves directly. This latter consequence of paying for downloads is almost certainly not one that helps the BPI or RIAA.
So this is indeed great news for Sony (and a nice bonus for whichever Sony exec started the Facebook group ), even better news for Shelter which are a great charity, but probably not in the long term, good for the BPI. Just like the worst thing for people making money out of "The War on Drugs" is people coming off drugs, the worst thing for those making a living from fighting piracy, are honest people who are willing to pay for something they like.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Yet you would not believe how many people are bitching and moaning about how the "spiteful" and "selfish" people with "no tolerance for the tastes of others" have "ruined" the chart results for poor little Joe McElderry and they should be "ashamed of themselves" for being such "sheep".
No, I'm not kidding. People actually think that. The conversations have hurt my head so much I hardly slept last night.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
What I find difficult to wrap my mind around is the fact that anyone really cares this much what song is at #1 on Christmas. Yes, I know, it's a long-standing British fixation, presumably starting from some record label or another trumpeting about how popular a gift their latest 45 was. And it's nice that from time to time it can be used to focus attention on something serious, like with "Do They Know It's Christmas?"
But really: Why does it matter?
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