RATM To Ruin Cowell’s Christmas
X-Factor has once again been a huge success this year. During last weekend’s final viewing figures peaked at 19.1m viewers and the showed averaged a healthy 11.8m viewership each weekend. That’s an audience share of well over 40%, with a 62% peak during this season’s grand finale.
But it seems that some people are starting to grow tired of the X-Factor winning candidate being Christmas number 1 almost by default. And it’s easy to understand why, here’s a list of the Christmas UK number 1s the last few years:
2005: Shayne Ward
2006: Leona Lewis
2007: Leon Jackson
2008: Alexandra Burke
For the non UK readers, all of the above are former winners of the talent (highly debatable) show.
It doesn’t help that this year’s winning song is a Miley Cyrus cover. Personally, I’d rather shove a rusty spoon down my ears than listen to her. Hell, I’d even rather listen to her dad.
So to prevent another one of Simon Cowell’s darlings to climb the charts fans of American rock band Rage Against The Machine have decided to to whatever they can to stop this from happening. They have chosen Facebook as their battle ground and have so far amassed 55,000 people believing in the cause. Whilst the Participation Inequality would suggest not all of these people would be actively involved with this campaign, early evidence suggest they may just beat Joe McElderry to the much coveted top spot.
Cleverly, they have added various viral aspects to their campaign which has made it really easy to spread, such as the assets they have made available publically and user generated content is featured on the website.
There is also a campaign website and the song they are trying to push is called ‘Killing in the name of’ and aptly includes the line ‘F*ck you, I won’t buy what you tell me!’.
If you would like to support this cause, you can buy/download the RATM single here.
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RATM are also on Simon Cowell’s label and there’s been rumours that its a well orchestrated campaign on his part. However, the X-factor CD single only hit the shops today, so who knows if that’ll give it enough of a bump between now and Sunday.
Hi Luke, thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment.
As I understand it both artists are with the Sony BMG label, who Simon Cowell works for after his label Syco got snatched up by them.
So that does not necesserily mean that Cowell stands to profit from both acts, but his employer will.
Having said that, if this was orchestrated by Cowell or Sony BMG I will both deplore and applaud the cynisism and ingenuinity of this campaign.
What about Miley Cyrus: I totally agree. Her voice and songs are very bad. But X-Factor I like!
Daan, yes you are correct it is Sony that stands to win in this battle either way. It is interesting to watch just how the Facebook campaign for RATM has taken off and given them such an early lead. That campaign has cost practically zero and picked up tons of media coverage. Which in turn drives sales (memories of Blur V Oasis 1996 spring to mind). I wonder how many record execs will be looking at this and trying to find ways of exploiting their back catalog’s.
But with 20 million viewers for last Sundays X Factor, 6.1 million of which voted for Joe to win, I do find it hard to believe he won’t be sitting at the top of the charts come Sunday.
Apparently the Rage Factor website was set up by a former Sony BMG A&R man who currently owns a media branding company (see: http://rich-baker.com/2009/12/15/x-factor-vs-ratm/)- I’m assuming that’s Eject Media, as their name is at the bottom of the site.
With Joe’s single having only hit the shops recently it will be interesting how long RATM can hold out for.
Whether they make it or not, it will definately make a great case study of how to set up a grass roots campaign!
Either way Cowell’s going to make some money. I want Rage to be Xmas number 1 ‘The Climb’ is such a weak song and it looks like RATM are bookies favorite to win check it out here http://bit.ly/5s0RD5