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Facebook 1: 0 Simon Cowell - Rage Against The Machine is UK #1 single for Xmas
- handelaar 17y agoWhy 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 17y ago"the culturally-significant-for-Brits Xmas Top 40" You've just made an entire storyline from Love Actually make more sense to me.
- axod 17y agoNice 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
- nomoresecrets 17y agoAnd what's funny about trojans?
- axod 17y agoAlso I never forget watching a US TV show, where they said someone slid down the stairs on their fanny. I never laughed so hard.
- Batsu 17y agoStrange how this explanation changes a flagged post into a genuinely interesting one.
- access_denied 17y agoI always held the suspicion that there is a difference between good and bad writing.
- algorias 17y agoIf the submission can't be understood within its own context, then the title should indeed have been more explicit.
- dc2k08 17y agoSometimes it's difficult to be succinct in < 80.
- cruise02 17y agoI'm sure Simon is crying all the way to the bank over this.
- omouse 17y agoIt'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...)
- cruise02 17y agoFor 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 17y agoThe big winner was Sony, who profit from sales of either.
- axod 17y agoI 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.
- petercooper 17y agoI'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.
- axod 17y agoTrue, 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.
- lionhearted 17y agoYou 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.
- gabrielroth 17y agoI'm a little confused by this comment. Electronic elements have been a mainstay of pop production for a quarter of a century.
- TheSOB88 17y agoYou and me both, sexy cakes.
- gabrielroth 17y agoUpvoted for calling me sexy cakes.
- motters 17y agoPersonally 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 17y agoThe musical angle is secondary. The real story is that a centralized cultural influence (Cowell) was overshadowed by a distributed cultural influence (Facebook).
- motters 17y agoGood 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.
- gaius 17y agoThere 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.
- Blasa 17y agoWhat 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-with-record-breaking-audience.html 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.
- mtrimpe 17y agoStill, stuff like this makes me excited again about seeing the next 40 years unfold ...
- colbyolson 17y agoI'm in favor of anything relating to RATM. Brings me back, infact, I think I'll listen to some right now. :-)
- msie 17y agoFacebook:1 Simon Cowell:0 ?
- zandorg 17y agoI read it as "A record by Simon Cowell called Rage Against The Machine is UK #1 single for Xmas". Your formatting is better.
- scorxn 17y agoThe syntax in the headline is common outside the US. eg: http://livescore.com/ http://livescore.com/
- DougBTX 17y agoIt'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"...
- perokreco 17y agoYou're wrong. Here is another example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_prem/8377195.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_prem/8377195.st...
- Quarrelsome 17y agoWhy 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 17y agoRage 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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx19x9xPB8o