Rage Against The XFactor - The result & what it means.

Well, the sales figures have all been counted & the result is now known.

The race to the prestigious UK Christmas Number 1 position, has been won by Rage Against the Machine & their song "Killing In The Name Of". They "won" by 50,000 sales.
Apparently, the Rage Against The Machine song sold 500,000 copies during this week.

So, what does all this mean?
Well, it certainly raises a lot of issues & not just for the world of music either.

For a start, every single copy of "Killing In The Name Of" sold, all 500,000 of them, was a digital download & they were all sold in the UK only. No physical copies of the track were sold.
Just think about that for a moment.
This has just changed the way that music is sold forever. Yes, downloads have been used to help calculate chart positions for a few years now. But, did anyone really think that a song would get to the Number 1 slot on download sales alone & this quickly too? I doubt it.

As i said in my previous blog post about this topic. This means that ANY song, as long as it's available from certain download sites, can now get into the charts & possibly get to Number 1.
Is there now any real need for a physical copy of a single, or even an album for that matter, to be sold? I'm sure that question will be asked in many record company boardrooms tomorrow morning.

The next point is where does this leave the XFactor?
Sure, the program will continue & i have no real problem with that. But, it has now lost it's hold on the charts. It's invincibility has gone.
I have no doubt that a lot of people bought the XFactor single, as a protest against Rage Against The Machine & yet, it still lost out.

What will happen the next time a TV Talent show winner releases a single?
Will there be another Internet campaign to stop it? I bet there will be & who's to say it won't have the same result.
Granted, i thought the choice of protest song, this time around, was perfect & summed up the whole campaign exactly. But, i'm sure the amount of swearing in "Killing In The Name Of" put a lot of people off & probably contributed to the amount of people who did buy the XFactor song.

But, the biggest & possibly most important lesson to be learned from all of this, is the power of the Internet. If we ever needed an example of the power of the Internet & of people power. Then this is surely it.

I'm sure there will be a lot of people & not just in the world of music, taking stock of this result & analysing what it all means.

After all, we have a General Election in the UK in 2010....

Rage Against The XFactor.

I have just re-purchased the song "Killing In The Name Of" by the U.S band Rage Against The Machine, from iTunes. Nothing unusual in that you might think, unless you happen to live in the U.K that is.
By the way, i already have that track on the original Rage Against The Machine album & i also have an edited version.
So, why on earth would i want to buy the song for a third time?

Well, for those not in the know. There is an Internet campaign going on this week, in the U.K, to try & get "Killing In The Name Of" to Number 1 in the U.K Music Charts & thereby make in the Christmas Number 1. A very prestigious acheivement & something that is always a hard fought battle. Well, here in the U.K anyway.

Over the past few years, the Christmas Number 1 song has been performed by whoever was the winner of the XFactor TV talent show. Last year it was Alexandra Burke & her "version" of the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah". The show usually finishes just before Christmas & the current series finished last Sunday. So, it is timed perfectly for the Christmas market. Surely not a coincidence?

Because of the enormous popularity of the show, the song chosen for the XFactor winner is virtually guaranteed to be the Christmas Number 1. Something a lot of people are not very happy about & i'll admit, i tend to agree with them.

There has been a huge debate in the U.K, during this series of the XFactor, about how the show is possibly changing popular music, how it is stifling the opportunities for original artists & also the amount of power that the show & others like it, wield. Both in the world of popular music & even in the world of prime time TV as well.
That is probably a topic for another blog, or even a video.

This year however somebody has said "enough is enough" & decided to try & do something about it. Hence the campaign to try & get "Killing In The Name Of" to the top of the charts.

Why that song? I don't know. But, you've only got to listen to the lyrics to understand why & even the name of the band, Rage Against The Machine, is a bit of a giveaway.

For me. at least, it is the perfect choice. It's a song of rebellion ("fuck you, i won't do what you tell me") & i'm sure it appeals to all of those who dislike the idea of a TV show, more or less, controlling the music charts & probably stifling the music business in the process.

The next question is obviously, "is it all worth it & will it make any difference?".
Well, so far, i do think it is making a difference. The song is currently Number 1 in the Midweek Charts. No guarantee of success i agree. But, a pretty good acheivement, even if it doesn't manage to hold onto that spot come Sunday when the Official Christmas Charts are announced.

The whole campaign seems to have stirred a sense of rebellion in a lot of people & stirred up a lot of debate as well. For example the Facebook group for this campaign has over 400,000 members. In my opinion, that can only be a good thing.

Yes, i do understand the irony that both Rage Against The Machine & the XFactor song are both on the Sony label. So, Sony will be a big winner out of this.
But, at least it's got people talking about & buying music, legally, again. It will also have introduced a whole new group of people to Rage Against The Machine. Who must be sitting there shaking their heads in complete bemusement at what is happening. I wonder what they make of all of this?

Ultimately, the campaign may well fail. As i'm sure there will be a counter campaign to stop "Killing In The Name Of" reaching that coveted Number 1 spot. After all, the song has some naughty swear words in it & we can't have that can we?

For me, this is also a bit of fun & a good example of people power. And just think, a few years ago this could never have happened.
The Official Charts were always made up of songs that were 'released" by record companies. These days, just about any song can count towards a chart position.
Now, a song doesn't have to be "released", it just has to have been bought on certain download sites. So, no longer can the Charts be manipulated in the way that they used to be.
"Killing In the Name Of" is a very good example of this & also an indication of where this may well lead in the future.
There may well be interesting times ahead.

In the meantime, why not do what i did, make your own protest & buy, or even re-purchase "Killing In the Name Of" by Rage Against The Machine on iTunes (in the UK).

"Fuck you, i won't do what you tell me".

Oops too late.....

Last night i dreamt of cats...

Last night i dreamt of cats.

But, as with most dreams, by the time i'd woken up i couldn't really remember exactly what had happened in the dream itself. However, it did get me thinking about another aspect of cats that i do know & have experience about.

I live in an urban area & in my small patch i have noticed a major change over the past year.

Up until approx a year ago we used to have a number of garden birds that populated the area. That's apart from the obvious seagulls that you would expect, due to the close proximity of the sea.
Now, these garden birds were not exactly exotic. Just sparrows, blackbirds, blue tits, thrushes etc. Although we did get the occasional more interesting species. But, it was good to see & hear them anyway.
We used to have a big family group of sparrows that lived in a honeysuckle bush out the back of our house. You could hear them frolicking in & around the bush & in a strange way it was comforting to hear them.

As a birthday present, a year ago, i was even bought a nice, new bird box to fix on our wall. In the hope that the birds might be tempted to use it to build a nest in there. This had happened in the past, before the old box fell apart that is!

That box has never been put up. Why?....

Well, approx a year ago, some new people moved in down the road from us & brought with them their two cats. At around the same time, more cats arrived with another family.
Within a matter of weeks, all the garden birds had disappeared. Frightened off presumably?

Now, i have absolutely nothing against cats & actually like them & for some strange reason, they seem to like me too. My wife thinks it's because i tend not to make too much of a fuss about them. Maybe they consider me a challenge? Who knows?

Domestic cats kill millions of birds every year in the UK.
Now, if they were wild animals & killed them for food, as a means of survival, i wouldn't have a problem with that. But, domestic cats are, generally, very well cared for & have no real need to kill for food.
They tend to kill birds because it is in their nature & you can't really blame then for that i guess. They also kill them as a weird kind of present for their owners.
How often have cat owners been presented with a dead bird, or animal? I've seen it happen on a number of occasions.
I vividly remember being at my in-laws house when their cat caught a garden bird. The noise from the bird as it was being played with before it was killed was distressing & upsetting for all who heard it. Including the cats owners.
But, if you own a cat, what do you expect?
It's a bit like us humans killing for sport & we all know how that is generally viewed don't we!

Now, i don't blame the cats for this garden carnage. As i said, it's in the cats nature to do this.
So what can be done?

As with any pet, the owners should give careful consideration of what owning the pet will actually mean for themselves & for their life as a whole.
For example, what will it really mean to your valued garden bird population when you get a cat?
These things are so often not thought of before acquiring any pet. And the blame for that can be laid fairly & squarely at the door of the pet owner, nobody else.
This is obviously part of a much bigger discussion & one i don't intend to go into here.

So, please give some consideration for what you are potentially doing when you think about getting that pet. That decision can often have far bigger implcations than you might imagine.

All i know is that in my garden there are now no birds, or birdsong & i have a brand new bird box sitting idle in a cupboard.

Here's hoping i'll be able to put that bird box in it's rightful place one day.