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.

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.

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.

10 million viewers a week implies otherwise

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