The charts have meaning to some. You know it’s horse manure and so do I. I hope this helps to highlight the manure-ness of the charts to those who don’t yet get it.

Pushing X-Factor from the ‘top’ of the charts is a smile on a dog. It means nothing. It didn’t dent the sales of Joe Schmoe’s tune, just sold *more* copies. It’ll be a footnote in the decades-long decline in meaning of the charts, that ceased to have any intrinsic meaning when the internet removed the barrier to discovery/listening, but will soldier on for a few more decades just through the momentum an institution of that size has.

In the meantime, an exercise like this pretends it still has meaning. If you want to maintain that pretense, go right ahead

BTW, I’m LOVING this discussion – thanks so much for entertaining it. I really appreciate you taking the time to discuss this

Do you refer to the people who supported the campaign? I don’t think the guys who started and ran the campaign were lazy.

If armchair activism pushed X-factor of the charts it may need to be given a bit more credit. Power in my opinion is the ability to make something happen and influence the world around you. This campaign did that.

“What we do next though, is a whole lot more exciting.”

Agreed. This campaign wasn’t the end of anything. It’s however a reference to point to for those who doubt what can be done from an armchair.

I say: Let the games begin!

Something being marginally less crap than some other supremely crap thing is no reason to champion it. It’s reason to invent a third option. This wasn’t a binary equation – it wasn’t ‘buy this OR buy that’ – and it also wasn’t as black and white as saying ‘buying RATM MP3s = bad’ – it doesn’t, it didn’t do any harm at all. It just didn’t do anything.

To overcome cynicism with laziness and a false sense of armchair activism is a pyrrhic victory. Spending 29p on rock star back catalogue isn’t revolutionary, it’s a short-term anaesthetic that does nothing.

It hasn’t done any harm at all. Because it didn’t do anything – good or bad – besides making people feel like they’d done ‘enough’, like they were ’sticking it to The Man.

Corporations can be accidental agents of Revolution – RATM’s music is revolutionary whichever label it’s on. That’s a given. Wall-E is a fantastic seditious counter-cultural film, made by Disney and Pixar. Mike Watt’s first 2 solo albums are on Columbia…

Infiltration of corporate entities has a long and distinguished history. But sometimes the tables are turned, and the corps make a whole pile of cash off people thinking they’re kicking against the pricks when instead they are strengthening the position of the status quo.

I guess that was the point of this post – fix or not (now we know it clearly wasn’t) it wouldn’t have changed a thing. The outcome is the same and nothing has changed.

What we do next though, is a whole lot more exciting.

“Punk would’ve been about people putting on gigs, making their own music and ignoring the charts altogether.”

That to me is almost like the Sex Pistols ignoring the Queen.

“The world would’ve been a much better place if those 500,000 sales had been pointed at the nation’s indie artists. ”

I agree. It wouldn’t have worked tough as a short term campaign. That type of thing needs to happen in the long run.

“The only way it’s different is that some people now think of themselves and their internet peers as revolutionaries, like 15 year olds buying Che t-shirts from Walmart.”

Still, apart from the Wall-mart bit, better than 15 year-olds buying the X-factor winners t-shirt don’t you think?

I get what you are saying though I think we may be stressing the details here when the basic idea is quite revolutionary.

I refer to an article twoted by Andrew Dubber this morning…

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-where-next-in-the-battle-against-the-establishment-1848137.html

The quote that sums it up for me is this…

“So their success challenges the central obstacle seeping through the country, which is cynicism.”

I think this ignites a bit of optimism in the minds of many people who have not yet “gotten” the power of the Internet as a platform.

An individual with a good idea and a platform to spread the word has become a force to be reckoned with.

This gives me hope.

But when it started getting pitched as ‘the people vs Cowell’ – as the internet taking on the machine of the industry, I despaired at the way that the ease of starting a campaign now means that people don’t actually think through the best way to do something, they choose the path of least resistance.

…I’m going to give some time to thinking of alternative ‘campaign’ ideas that could promote the cause of independent music sharing, as an alternative to this kind of thing… I honestly don’t mean to come across as a miserablist – it’s not significant enough to be miserable about. It’s business as usual

I would, however, love to hear you do a bass and voice cover of Killing In The Name, Jennifer

I think part of it is the sense of all those people out there, some of them quite young, who – even though the difference it made was in a sense trivial – have had the experience of joining with others to make themselves heard. This time it was trivial, next time it might be on something more important. Maybe that’s over-optimistic, but I just can’t see it as a bad thing.

I don’t think it was in the slightest bit punk. Punk would’ve been about people putting on gigs, making their own music and ignoring the charts altogether. So much of what we think of as punk wasn’t a remotely punk ethic. My favourite ‘real punk’ is Mike Watt – don’t think he’s ever troubled the charts, but has been making awesome vital music for close to 30 years. A massive inspiration.

I think the world is exactly the same because of it. The only way it’s different is that some people now think of themselves and their internet peers as revolutionaries, like 15 year olds buying Che t-shirts from Walmart. Sony and the charts people are going to be more than happy with all the ‘we won, we beat the x-factor’ BS because the end result is sales, and sales on their terms, through their outlets of music on their labels…

So much in the industry is about getting people to buy music for reasons other than just liking it – branding, tribalism, tv-shows, campaigns – they’re all cut from the same cloth, and are all a distraction from us weaving our own beautiful and complex narrative where the musicians who make the music we choose to wrap around ourselves aren’t totemic mythological people but are there to be spoken to, congratulated and encouraged. The world would’ve been a much better place if those 500,000 sales had been pointed at the nation’s indie artists. Or, of course, if the campaign had just been to donate to Shelter, but that’s another red-herring.

I agree. The charts mean nothing to me personally and I don’t think that’s what made me tingle here.

I was trying to say that without the campaign this conversation wouldn’t have been taking place this Christmas.

I think the fact that it is means that the campaign stirred the pot just a bit and since we’ve established it wasn’t rigged I feel warmed by the mere fact that it happened. Cheap victory as Rich said. Still it makes me smile where even just knowing that the X-factor machine exists makes me queasy to say the least.

I agree that the original intent of this particular song was directed at something more serious. I don’t think the campaign will damage that message much in the long run.

Someone tweeted Sabotage would have been a better choice. Maybe.

All talk of “better music” or popularity is irrelevant to me in this case.

Don’t you think this campaign was punk Steve? If you do, wouldn’t you agree the World is just a slight bit better off because it took place? Just a tiny bit?

that there are still 502,000 odd people (over a million if you look at the Facebook page) out there at least who feel passionate enough about music which has soul and substance to take part in this campaign.

But LOADS of music has soul and substance. All the music I listen to has soul and substance. I refuse to listen to music that doesn’t have soul and substance in my estimation – every person who bought it will have a different classification of what that means, what music does that for them. For some of them, Enya will make them cry, for some it’ll be Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion, and for others they’ll get something magical from obscure 70s funk records. To suggest that one song selling more copies than another is somehow emblematic of caring about soul and substance is to hand WAY too much credence to the notion of pop charts.

Soul and substance has nothing to do with popularity, and everything to do with personal narrative. As much as I love RATM’s music, I actually think this undermines it’s power and message, reducing it to a slogan, far removed from the critique of institutional racism that Killing In The Name’s lyrics actually comprise.

But, as I’ve said, it’s not that I don’t think it should be there, just that it means nothing for it to be there