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.)
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"...
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.
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.
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.)