Facebook Campaign Decides UK Christmas Music Charts 362
Posted
by
kdawson
from the rage-against-the-commercialization dept.
from the rage-against-the-commercialization dept.
uglyduckling writes "A grassroots Facebook campaign has pushed the 1990s Rage Against the Machine song 'Killing in the Name Of' to the top of the British music charts for Christmas. The campaign was planned to prevent the X-Factor winner from charting Christmas number one, as has been the case for the past four years. It was supposedly a kick against the commercialism of Christmas and commercial dominance in the music scene, although Rage and the X-Factor winner Joe McElderry were actually signed to the same label. Despite this minor detail, it's interesting to note that this is the first song to reach the number one spot through downloads alone in the UK, and is a testament to the organizational power of social networking sites like Facebook. The Facebook group also asked for donations to charity, and has raised £70,000 for the homeless charity Shelter."
Vote For Something Serious! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's like totally horrifying.
At least protest for a something worthwhile - e.g. against clause 11 of the "Digital Economy Bill"http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldbills/001/10001.13-19.html [parliament.uk] Essentially gives Lord Mandelson complete control of what is published on Internet and unrivalled power and "interpretation" of copyright law.
You can join petitions here: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/list/open?cat=758 [number10.gov.uk]
Then again Simon Cowell wants to "X-Factor" politics http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1236002/The-Politics-Factor-Simon-Cowell-unveils-plan-launch-election-debate-show.html [dailymail.co.uk] This mentality scares the crap out of me!
Re:Not the same label (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with this, but one thing I am baffled about - why are RATM part of the Sony Empire? Surely completely against what they stand for?
Re:Charity (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Charity (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Actually, all this shows is how silly charts ar (Score:3, Interesting)
Firstly, you should at least google "Rage Against The Machine" before saying something so incredibly ignorant. Secondly, what the protest group was trying to do was to stop some bland, middle-of-the-road, one-hit-wonder from getting #1 when it should be going to someone who at least has the where-with-all to write their own goddamn songs. Your "mass marketing" straw man no place here.
Re:Charity (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Summary disingenuous (Score:4, Interesting)
Setting aside our obvious differences in musical taste, you're wrong. There's no "instead", both acts sold lots of records and RATM sold around 500,000. I doubt that the people buying "Killing in the name" would ever have bought the X-factor single instead.
The other end result of course is that the Facebook group raised £70k for charity, and RATM are now pledging to donate the profits from sales of the record to charity too, something which I highly doubt Joe McElderberry, X-Factor winner, will do.
Re:Charity (Score:4, Interesting)
You might be right... but I think this requires some examination. The BPI are the UK equivalent of the RIAA. They similarly earn their crust by representing studios against things like copyright infringement. Now people buying music from these studios means that the BPI's paymasters have more money and some of that money might roll downhill. But like the RIAA, the BPI make capital out of scaring the studios with the spectre of piracy. Two things happen when people buy music as a pure download. Firstly, they're a counter to the pirates that take without paying, thus they show some honesty in the target audience meaning piracy seems less threatening than it otherwise would. Secondly, it supports and promotes a distribution model that doesn't require a lot of capital or risk to get involved in, thus opening up the market to smaller studios and even artists marketing themselves directly. This latter consequence of paying for downloads is almost certainly not one that helps the BPI or RIAA.
So this is indeed great news for Sony (and a nice bonus for whichever Sony exec started the Facebook group ), even better news for Shelter which are a great charity, but probably not in the long term, good for the BPI. Just like the worst thing for people making money out of "The War on Drugs" is people coming off drugs, the worst thing for those making a living from fighting piracy, are honest people who are willing to pay for something they like.
Re:Charity (Score:3, Interesting)
And there is the further question as to whether or not it is more 'anti-establishment' being told what to buy by some a TV offering or some grassroots facebook campaign
I think there's a huge difference. One product was pushed by a multi-million pound commercial machine over dozens of hours of prime-time TV, endlessly gossiped about in the papers and on the radio. The other was pushed by a part-time rock DJ making a Facebook page. These things are worlds apart.
Re:Charity (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet you would not believe how many people are bitching and moaning about how the "spiteful" and "selfish" people with "no tolerance for the tastes of others" have "ruined" the chart results for poor little Joe McElderry and they should be "ashamed of themselves" for being such "sheep".
No, I'm not kidding. People actually think that. The conversations have hurt my head so much I hardly slept last night.
Re:Not the same label (Score:2, Interesting)
I also have a relevant quote:
"Main Entry: hypocrite
Pronunciation: \hi-p-krit\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English ypocrite, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin hypocrita, from Greek hypokrits actor, hypocrite, from hypokrinesthai
Date: 13th century
1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings
— hypocrite adjective"
Re:Charity (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm probably being dense, but how does this undermine claims that online music piracy is responsible for falling sales? (Assuming sales are falling). As this song is both cheap (I think 29 pence is pretty fair to have a song I like to listen to whenever I want) and is available as a download, it puts the lie to common pro-pirate arguments that "prices are hiked too high" and "they wont give it to me in a form I want".
Not arguing, I just don't understand where you got the conclusion.
Regards,
H.
Re:Not Facebook - Simon Cowell (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't see anybody pulling this off again. This was a one-off never to be repeated feat. There are lots of good ideas floating around now about what single we should all buy in opposition to the next X-factorbot, the best of which, I think, is to buy this year's X-factor single. But that's the point, there are so many possibilities that no one of them is going to be triumphant and capture the public's (lack of) imagination in the same way. There'll be competing facebook groups campaigning for different songs and it'll be self-defeating.
For the record, I didn't bother with either song. The UK charts have never reflected my preferences.
Straw man (Score:2, Interesting)
In this case by showing Sony we won't take their crap
And there's your straw man. Everyone else new about Sony long before you - who said it was a campaign against Sony in any way?
Yes, I agree it shows how silly the charts are, but that itself was part of the point for some of us:
In fact what this shows is that the system WORKS. Hype a song to a group and voila, instant hit.
You're missing the point - yes it played by the same rules, but it did so in a way that was so ludicrious, it becomes obvious how silly it is. A single from 17 years ago? That wasn't even rereleased? That wasn't in the shops? That didn't have any paid for advertising? Yes, suddenly it is apparently how silly it is that an organised campaign can get any song they like to number 1, even at the most difficult week of the year.
(Also the RATM "system" didn't involve spending large sums of money on marketing, or being accompanied with a TV show watched by millions of viewers, so not really the same.)
Now if you REALLY wanted to show you could change mass marketing, you would have gotten NOBODY to buy ANY song.
Which is a lot harder of course. Feel free to have a go yourself next year.
Astroturf (Score:1, Interesting)
Dig a little.
The campaign set up a website [ragefactor.co.uk].
This site is registered in the name of a Mr. Neill Ridley, founder of a little PR firm called Eject Media.
By a curious coincidence, Neill Ridley used to be an A&R man at... Sony.
Guess who he worked with there? Oh, look, it's Simon Cowell...
More here. [2-4-7-music.com]
They deliberately chose that band and that song to give themselves a good laugh at the general public. "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me"? Looks like you just did.
Re:Charity (Score:4, Interesting)
What I find difficult to wrap my mind around is the fact that anyone really cares this much what song is at #1 on Christmas. Yes, I know, it's a long-standing British fixation, presumably starting from some record label or another trumpeting about how popular a gift their latest 45 was. And it's nice that from time to time it can be used to focus attention on something serious, like with "Do They Know It's Christmas?"
But really: Why does it matter?
Re:Charity (Score:3, Interesting)
The point was never about depriving the X factor label of profits.
In Britain, the Christmas Number One record has a sentimental value for many people. It feels like a part of history, and the record will feature in future years as a key nostalgia reference. And often became a permanent Christmas anthem. Or a fun novelty record. It used to be a surprise who would win it. It'd be a proper popularity contest based on the actual song.
All of this seemed to be taken away for the last 4 years by the winner being automatically whoever won the X factor competition. Inevitably the song was a forgettable piece of shit. But it sold anyway as stocking fillers.
The point was to get something other than X factor to number one. It wasn't about money. (Other than the benefit to the associated charity.)
But even if it was about depriving money, it's target would have been Simon Cowell. And he doesn't benefit from Rage takings. Sony has two subsidiaries - SyCo (Simon Cowell's label) and Epic Records. The X factor record is from SyCo, Rage is from Epic. Sony benefits from both X Factor and Rage sales, but Cowell doesn't.
That would be a pretty dumb question. A grassroots facebook campaign isn't covered by anyone's definition of "establishment".
Re:two parties is a natural evolution (Score:3, Interesting)
two parties the ultimate natural evolution of all democracies, and this is a good thing, despite you and your fringe beliefs, whether far right or far left.
Moderate is a matter of perspective. While conscious of Godwin's Law, I'd just like to point out that most supporters of the European right wing in the mid 20th century (the Nazis in Germany, the Fascists in Italy and and the Falangists in Spain) considered themselves moderate, and anyone speaking against them was considered an extremist lefty. Meanwhile, the extreme left (Stalinist Soviets, Spanish Anarchists, Tito's League of Communists of Yugoslavia) similarly considered themselves moderate and their opponents rightwing extremists. "Moderatism" in democracy doesn't exist -- at best you are supporting the status quo, hence your use of the term "stability".
Now, as to the main thrust of your argument, the UK is perfect counterevidence.
The UK spent 18 consecutive years under the Conservatives. They're extreme capitalists in that they wanted to sell everything. They're right wing, just not violent right wingers. The main opposition, a nominally socialist party, was getting nowhere... until they moved right. They had to move pretty far to the right to get the Conservative voters to change their spots. The creeping bipartitism in the UK led to something quite bipolar: while selling rightwing policies to rightwing voters, they were still presenting themselves as being the "left" option, despite having leapfrogged the "centre ground" liberal democrats, and as the only way to stop the "rightwing" Conservatives getting in.
Now there's been a global economic crisis, and somehow the UK's economic state is the fault of the current prime minister, even though every other country is a badly off as we are. Apparently the way "moderates" should punish him is by voting for an even righter wing party, the Conservatives. The bogey man alternative pushed by the press is the British National Party, a bunch of two-bit half-wit racists who managed to get a couple of seats in the European Parliament as a result of extreme voter apathy.
Policies by Labour and the Conservatives are increasingly led by business interests -- more and more we're seeing the same list of donors giving vast amounts of money to both parties. The more the press supports the bipartite illusion, the less the two parties need to differentiate themselves from each other in order to get votes. The less they have to differentiate themselves, the less choice is available to the voter. In the end, the country is run by the corporations and the work of government becomes a work of theatre.
You think I'm exaggerating? Look back at the USA. The two parties have practically identical donor lists. The public started twigging to this and became disenfranchised, until along came a charismatic man offering real change that the people wanted: healthcare, justice, equality.
Then he gets in and his policies slide away one-by-one as his party's money men start to pull on the reins.
What the US needs is for Obama to stand for his second term as an independent. That'd mix things up a bit....
/HAL.
Re:Vote For Something Serious! (Score:3, Interesting)
I loved "Yes, Minister". You don't get documentries like that anymore.
You've obviously never seen "In The Thick Of It" then....
/HAL.
Re:Still a big fail (Score:2, Interesting)
I just think it is very strange to pick a band that is signed to the same label as the X-Factor dude who you did not want to have this.
The big name label that you wanted to avoid getting paid is still getting paid, so did you really do anything to fight commercial music when the exact label you wanted to fight against, you just helped get more sales.
No, the pretty big fail here is coming from you, who have not read the many comments before yours that clearly state that they are not signed to the exact same label.
That's not a minor detail, dude. In fact, that's a pretty big fail there kids...
They are merely both signed to labels that are, ultimately, owned by Sony. And so what, unless you think all of us should be refusing to buy Sony E-Readers, games consoles and IP on the basis that Simon Cowell benefits by association?
This is not ultimately about protesting against a label. It's not even about the rat Cowell, although I'm sure he'd like to believe otherwise. It is about schadenfreude, personal preference, and the cheap laugh of getting a good, loud, totally politically incorrect song containing seventeen uses of the word 'fuck' on the Christmas charts where everybody's granny might hear it. Where the label, despite benefitting financially, do not particularly want it to be seen. If you think that the charts aren't managed as carefully as any other prime storefront placement, then you're an optimist.
There's an interesting take on what Sony's view of this might be [guardian.co.uk] in the comments of this (dreadful) Guardian article.