Facebook 1: 0 Simon Cowell - Rage Against The Machine is UK #1 single for Xmas | Hacker News Reader

Facebook 1: 0 Simon Cowell - Rage Against The Machine is UK #1 single for Xmas

sheamus.co.uk

59 pointshandelaar40 comments

Why we might care: for the last several years the winner of Cowell's reality TV show has been propelled immediately to #1 in time for the culturally-significant-for-Brits Xmas Top 40.

This year a backlash campaign to shove 'Killing in the Name' above it took off on Facebook and, in an unlikely outcome, the people who joined the group actually followed through and bought the RATM track during the correct time window.

(The link was posted before the programme aired on BBC Radio 1 and turned out to be completely accurate.)

"the culturally-significant-for-Brits Xmas Top 40"

You've just made an entire storyline from Love Actually make more sense to me.

Nice to see the shoe on the other foot for once. The number of quirky American things we have to figure out. Second base? wtf is second base... etc etc

And what's funny about trojans?

Also I never forget watching a US TV show, where they said someone slid down the stairs on their fanny. I never laughed so hard.

Strange how this explanation changes a flagged post into a genuinely interesting one.

I always held the suspicion that there is a difference between good and bad writing.

If the submission can't be understood within its own context, then the title should indeed have been more explicit.

Sometimes it's difficult to be succinct in < 80.

Personally I don't care about the views of Simon Cowell. I doubt that the music charts accurately reflect what people are actually listening to, due to the diversity of ways in which music can now be obtained and played.

The musical angle is secondary. The real story is that a centralized cultural influence (Cowell) was overshadowed by a distributed cultural influence (Facebook).

Good point. So this is an indicator the the continuing decline of the old non-interactive media formats, like TV shows, and the rise of online social networks.

There is slightly more to it than just centralized vs distributed. Consider the demographics. X-Factor viewers as a group are probably poorer, older and less educated* than Facebook users. The recent cold spell, the BBC speculates, meant fewer people who would have bought the X-factor single could get to a store to do so - even if a Facebooker wanted a physical CD, he or she would simply order it from Amazon and not care when it arrived, since the sale would be logged. At 79p for a single on iTunes, Facebook users could fix the UK charts every week without even noticing the expenditure in time or money. However what the X-factor has is people who really will loyally buy its single every year; the Facebook crowd has a very short attention span.

* I don't mean this in a disparaging way at all.

What are you estimating as the demographics for each?

As a 30 something alternative music type the RATM campaign was big on my facebook page. At least back in 2007 the xfactor was big with the 16-34 age group. So about the same age group, I'd have thought.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1560802/X-Factor-back...

Poorer, I'm not sure. The Xfactor crowd does seem less geeky/bookish than the ratm crowd, from the people I have met.

What this all means I'm not quite sure. Perhaps we will see the start of micro payment campaigns. 40p to support some cause is not much. You just have to make it have wide enough appeal.

I'm talking about the single-buyers. Lots of people watch these talent shows just for the trainwrecks. The people who take the X-factor seriously are the sort of people who'd watch a show just because it's presented by Ant and Dec... The people who buy whatever mass-produced focus-grouped auto-tuned rubbish the singles chart is normally full of.

I'd imagine the other sort of person who'd buy a single by "Joe" is the same demographically who'd buy one by say Cliff Richard.

Weird, I always though of xfactor single-buyers as young people (future pop wannabees) hoping to catch a bit of the star factor of the people they had been voting for.

Looking for more data I came across this

http://www.bpi.co.uk/members-area/article/bpi-statistical-ha...

It suggests that in 2008 95% of singles were downloaded. So I doubt the weather had much to do with it. Still no demographics on who actually buys cds normally though.

The UK chart is quite representative of music purchases, compared to most national charts, as it includes downloads from all of the major players. That doesn't cover piracy, free downloads, or certain types of streaming (e.g. Spotify) but has a significant reach IMHO.

I'm sure Simon is crying all the way to the bank over this.

It's not about the money. It's about the message. Even if all the albums cost $0, the message would remain the same. Not everything in the world is about money or banks or finances (no matter how much that's mentioned on HackerNews...)

For Simon Cowell it is all about the money. You think he's promoting a record because of its message? The attention that this promotion brought to both records put sales through the roof for both. Look at the sales of the 3rd place record and compare.

The big winner was Sony, who profit from sales of either.

I think the real point is that it puts the next series of xFactor in jeopardy.

It's a signal that a lot of the public are sick to death of the formulaic rubbish tossed out by these reality shows.

So if I was Simon, I'd be pretty worried now.

I'm not sure he's quivering in his boots. Even if The X Factor goes down the pan (and it's past its prime, I'd agree), he still has Britain's Got Talent and American Idol raking in the cash pretty quickly.

True, but I do think the age of the reality/kareoke show is nearing a close (Thankfully).

Big brother is gone, hopefully xfactor+britains got freaks, I think the public have grown absolutely sick of the same cheap TV.

It still sold about 10 times as many as the single at the number three spot...

People don't make money from singles sales anymore :/ The money from sales is petty cash.

Compare that with the Tour, the advertising income from the next series of xfactor, etc.

10 million viewers a week implies otherwise

edit: it's rare for UK tv shows to exceed 10m viwers

Facebook:1 Simon Cowell:0 ?

I read it as "A record by Simon Cowell called Rage Against The Machine is UK #1 single for Xmas". Your formatting is better.

The syntax in the headline is common outside the US. eg: http://livescore.com/

It's used in score listings, so that you can read down a colum of numbers side by side, but I don't remember ever seeing it used in prose. I'm quite sure it is normally "foo: 1, bar: 0"...

You're wrong. Here is another example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_prem/8377195.st...

Still, stuff like this makes me excited again about seeing the next 40 years unfold ...

Why we might care: We now have every right to put on "Killing in the name of" in response to tired, vacuous and bland xmas songs that are a pain to tolerate every year.

I'm in favor of anything relating to RATM. Brings me back, infact, I think I'll listen to some right now. :-)

Rage performs live on the BBC, including a surprise ending that shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx19x9xPB8o

You know, I thought pop music might've turned a corner a few years ago when producers were starting to use more electronic elements in pop. I thought there'd be some decent, slightly innovative pop music coming out in the future. I was mistaken.

I'm a little confused by this comment. Electronic elements have been a mainstay of pop production for a quarter of a century.

You and me both, sexy cakes.

Upvoted for calling me sexy cakes.

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