My Life, My Soundtrack

The Internet unites and music fans show their colours December 20, 2009

The big music news this past week in the UK has been the battle between Rage Against The Machine ‘Killing In The Name’ and Joe McElderry’s cover of ‘The Climb’. For those that don’t know – Joe is the x-factor 2009 winner.

In the past few years x-factor winners have won the UK Christmas number 1 single place. Every year there’s a campaign to ‘beat the x-factor and get *insert song here* to number 1′, but until this year the campaigns haven’t been powerful enough.

So what made 2009 different?
Firstly, in 2009 we saw the advancement of social media, Twitter took over the world and musician’s everywhere started tweeting. Facebook continued to be a driving source of keeping your friends updated – and the two worked hand in hand to keep rock fans updated and united about when and where to buy their chosen single.

Secondly, downloaded songs count towards the charts and there are a number of large retailers selling downloaded songs. Not that long ago you had to physically go to a store and buy a CD, and then you had to buy it from the right store for it to count. Today it’s easy to get a song to a retailer and almost any song can be counted. ‘Killing In The Name’ incidentally is also the first number 1 composed entirely of download sales and is the biggest electronic sale of a song ever.

Finally, a well known song was chosen to unite people. For some, the song didn’t matter, but for others ‘Killing In The Name’ was the perfect choice, the lyrical content and the bands political statements being a big factor in gaining their support.

OK, we all know that RATM’s music ultimately lines the pockets of Sony Executives, as does the x-factor. But it was never about who made money from this.

From the start it was about showing that just because you won a reality TV show and all your fans bought your CD in the first week of sales – didn’t mean you had the unalterable RIGHT to be the biggest selling single in the lead up to Christmas. Time and again through the debate people mentioned the x-factor winners ‘right’ to be the number 1, and that is what has everyone’s backs up. Yes RATM for number 1 was an organised campaign, but you can argue that the x-factor is too. This was two campaigns to get a song to number one creating a buzz and interest in music and the popular charts once again.

An added benefit of this race were the charities with RATM fans donating directly as well as profits from much of the sales of ‘Killing In The Name’ being donated as well.

There’s no big winner or loser here – but there is a clear showing that there are more people in this country that care about quality musicians and refute anyone’s ‘right’ to be marketed into being the best. Will this change anything in the long run – probably not – but it has shown the power of the Internet to unite music lovers in a cause and will hopefully introduce a new style of music to kids who’ve never been exposed to anything like it before.

The RATM campaign was started and co-ordinated by @jon_magic and @moogyboobles – who did an amazing job of keeping us going! Congrats to them.