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

http://www.sheamus.co.uk/ratm-xmas-number-one

by handelaar • 17 years ago

59 40 17 years ago

sheamus.co.uk

handelaar• 17 years ago

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.)

natrius• 17 years ago

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

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

axod5• 17 years ago

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

Batsu• 17 years ago

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

access_denied• 17 years ago

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

algorias• 17 years ago

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

cruise022• 17 years ago

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

omouse• 17 years ago

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...)

cruise022• 17 years ago

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.

notauser• 17 years ago

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

axod5• 17 years ago

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.

petercooper2• 17 years ago

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.

DougBTX2• 17 years ago

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

FreeRadical• 17 years ago

10 million viewers a week implies otherwise

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

lionhearted• 17 years ago

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.

gabrielroth2• 17 years ago

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

TheSOB88• 17 years ago

You and me both, sexy cakes.

motters2• 17 years ago

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.

lukifer• 17 years ago

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

motters2• 17 years ago

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.

gaius2• 17 years ago

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.

petercooper2• 17 years ago

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.

mtrimpe• 17 years ago

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

colbyolson• 17 years ago

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

msie• 17 years ago

Facebook:1 Simon Cowell:0 ?

zandorg• 17 years ago

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

scorxn• 17 years ago

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

DougBTX2• 17 years ago

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"...

Quarrelsome• 17 years ago

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.

rms• 17 years ago

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

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

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