AudioBoo - To Wear, Or Not To Wear?

Wearing a poppy should be a matter of individual choice.

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....

Race For The Poppy.

It's that time of year again. Well, here in the UK anyway.
The annual race to be the first person to wear a poppy is now well underway.
Now, don't get me wrong, i always buy at least one poppy myself & fully support the cause.

The Royal British Legion do a wonderful job & those have that have given & are still giving their lives for this country need & fully deserve to be remembered.
But, what i do have a bit of a problem with though, is the apparent obligation to wear a poppy by all politicians, TV presenters & basically anyone in the public eye & the race to do so. I often wonder if there is some kind of instruction sent out to those i mentioned that they must wear a poppy.

Maybe i'm just a little cynical? But, this, apparent, annual race to wear a poppy before anyone else, or because they feel they have to, does a great disservice to the original reason for wearing one in the first place.

The slogan of the annual poppy appeal used to be "wear your poppy with pride". That's exactly how it should be. Wear your poppy with pride & because you want to, not because of obligation.

We will remember them.