Earlier in the week i blogged about the Rage Against the Machine -v xFactor battle for the uk Christmas no.1 spot.
Whilst i was critical of it, i don’t mind seeing the xfactor & simon cowell being rattled by a huge public backlash. It was very interesting watching the campaign develop and i had more interest than most in it, because i had money riding on it.
On lucky.ie, i gamble every month… start off with €20 and the goal is to trun it in to as much as possible. I decided to get involved in this battle. On Monday, i backed Joe, thinking he was certain to win.
I’m well aware of the power and influence twitter & facebook can have, but i honestly didn’t think this campaign would work, purely because of the song choice. Personally, i think something like the muppets bohemian rhapsody would have worked better – it would appeal to more people. I thought Rage against the Machine’s song would be too hardcore for a lot of people. But people did buy, even though many had never even heard of rage against the machine…
Although we won’t know for a while, my guess is this campaign was won with free downloads. On Friday & Saturday, word started to get around that you could ‘buy’ 5 copies of RATM using coupons and get them for free with several music websites.
This probably made the difference in the end (up until then people actually had to PAY to download the song). Many people said they’d never bought a cd in their lives or paid to download music, but they made a point of doing so just to stick two fingers up to the monopoly simon cowell has within the music industry.
Anyway, it’s amazing that when you have financial interest in something, you really start taking interest and learning about things. I learned that every day during the week, sales figures are released at about 11am every morning.
I also learned that people ‘on the inside’ get the final chart sales & order at around 3.30pm every sunday – 3 and half hours before the official no.1 is revealed to the public on radio 1.
Here are is this weeks top 10 – i’m posting this before the no.1 is revealed on radio 1 😉
- KILLING IN THE NAME RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE 502672
- THE CLIMB JOE MCELDERRY 450838
- BAD ROMANCE LADY GAGA 61677
- THE OFFICIAL BBC CHILDREN IN NEED MEDLEY PETER KAY’S ANIMATED ALL STAR 52605
- STARSTRUKK 3OH3 FT KATY PERRY 40742
- YOU KNOW ME ROBBIE WILLIAMS 38435
- 3 WORDS CHERYL COLE 36232
- RUSSIAN ROULETTE RIHANNA 34094
- DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’ JOURNEY 33337
- MEET ME HALFWAY BLACK EYED PEAS 32517
So RATM have won it by about 50,000 sales. Well done to all you Rage backers & facebook campaigners…