Please, please buy Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name this week.
In case there are people out there who haven’t heard about it, there is a campaign to get RATM’s Killing in the Name as the Christmas number 1 in the UK singles chart in an attempt to beat the X Factor single.
I’m sure many of you are either aware or can figure out the reasons why we would want this to happen. X Factor predictably wins every year off the back of a TV show rather than genuine popularity of the music. This is evident from the fact it’s called the X Factor single rather than actually mentioning the song title or artist.
Not to mention the fact that the campaign for Killing in the Name has also raised £30,000 for charity Shelter.
However given you’re smart enough to know all this, what I really want to talk about is whether you should go out and actually buy the song. Many people will probably be thinking that it won’t make a difference and the X Factor single is obviously going to win so it’s pointless buying it.
But it isn’t.
Here are some stats. The Christmas number one normally sells around 400,000 copies, that is around half the number of people in the Facebook group for the campaign. If everyone in the group bought just one copy it would have twice the sales that the X Factor single would have.
Of course you’re thinking that most of the people in the group won’t buy it and so it won’t get nearly that much sales. I thought the same thing but apparently that simply isn’t the case. As well as the group growing exponentially (it’s gained 50,000 members in the past 24 hours) it is actually outselling X Factor currently according to BBC News.
It has been ahead of X Factor on the Amazon, HMV and Play.com sales charts and this afternoon finally overtook X Factor on the iTunes chart as well. It’s winning.
The reason we aren’t counting our chickens just yet though is because the X Factor single comes out in hard copy tomorrow, which is likely to give it a boost in sales.
However physical sales account for only 10% of singles sales these days and according to the BBC News article Killing in the Name is just over 10% ahead currently. This means that with the boost X Factor will get from physical sales it will amost be a dead heat.
Therefore we can draw two conclusions from this. Firstly is that you actually buying the single will actually make a difference as Killing in the Name can win this thing. Secondly it isn’t too far ahead that it makes it pointless you buying it because it’s obviously going to win. It’s going to be very close to the point where you actually buying the single could not make more of a difference.
So there you have it, buy it, it will make a difference. Also if you aren’t aware, it is only 29p on Amazon! For that kind of cash if you bring me your receipt when I next see you, I will actually refund you the cost of buying a single.
For those of you that really want to get involved, while chart rules prevent you from just buying loads of copies for yourself (although one wonders how they would know, especially if you buy from multiple sellers), you can gift extra purcahses to your friends and family. Don’t forget to join the Facebook group and invite all your friends too.
Oh and one final thought in case everything I have written has yet to sway you – just imagine how much Killing in the Name willing will annoy Daily Mail readers 😀 .
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Tags: killing in the name, music, x factor
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 12:50 am and is filed under Distractions, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.