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So, hundreds of thousands of people have joined a (largely Facebook-based) campaign to get Rage Against The Machine's "Killing In The Name" to the top of the UK Singles Chart this Christmas, as a backlash against the routine for the last few years where the winner of the X-Factor talent show has had their single released that week to inevitably top the charts. This year, young Joe McElderry is the winner and was expected to hit the No. 1 spot.
The question is, from some quarters, "who cares?" It's just a pop chart, irrelevant to the wider world, and has no bearing on the listening habits of those of us into less mainstream music. Right? It's not that simple though. The charts themselves are pretty irrelevant, but they influence factors such as radio play and news coverage, which in turn affect what the average person at home or in the street might know of current music.
Why does this matter? The problem is that if the country only ever sees music as manufactured pop, that damages prospects for the future. Kids growing up will be less interested in writing music, instead just wanting to be singers. Instrument makers and sellers will suffer. People taking music courses will drop and some schools and colleges will stop offering them. Independent record sellers, online and on the streets, will lose out to supermarkets who can pile up copies of the narrow range of music people know about. Music in the eyes of the public ceases to be an art form and becomes throwaway pop culture, unworthy of attention. What happens at the popular and commercial end does have a knock-on effect at the artistic and 'élite' end, in terms of the number of people involved, and the opportunities available to them.
It's also important that we're not forever being told what to buy. Instead of the traditional model of record companies investing in new bands the same way that banks invest in small businesses, the music industry instead now spends more money on marketing a few selected singers, who don't even perform their own songs, never mind play their own instruments. The result is less diversity, demand shaped by supply. Many worthy bands cannot get the exposure they deserve, while the people who could make a difference choose not to.
And recycling music so as to make it more immediately palatable to the paying public is again a negative move, buying short term success at the expense of damaging future prospects. And this song definitely ranks among the worst offenders: it was released less than a year ago, performed and thus popularised by Miley Cyrus who's arguably only famous because she has an influential musician father who was able to get her into a lucrative acting career, and written by someone else entirely. It's commoditisation of music at its worst.
This touches on another point that is important to me - the success of songs like that continues to support a growing tendency for the public to heap their praise upon the wrong person. If they like Joe's McElderry's song, they will say they like Joe. They won't necessarily realise that part of why they find the song catchy was because Ms Cyrus already drilled it into their subconscious earlier in the year. And they almost certainly won't appreciate the fact that Joe won't have played any of the other instruments on the track, or that the song was written by a pair of songwriters they've never heard of. They don't care about this stuff, which is exactly the problem. The figurehead gets all the praise while the truly creative people who did most of the work remain unheard of.
(We get this in computer game development too, where people often think the game was made by the publisher rather than the developer. eg. People thought Eidos made Tomb Raider. This sort of thing stops the developer from being able to develop their own brand or a reputation for quality, and makes it harder in turn for the consumer to predict the quality of what they'll be buying.)
And those who think that the X Factor's Simon Cowell won't mind, because Rage Against The Machine are on the same Sony label as he works for, are mistaken - Simon doesn't own Sony so he won't be seeing any money from the RATM sales. In fact, he is apparently furious about the campaign, claiming all the coverage of the RATM campaign is evidence of BBC bias against his show, which airs on the ITV channel. But this just shows the coverage is having an effect and raising awareness of music written and performed by real musicians, which will be a victory even if Rage Against The Machine only come in second.
Today is the last day when sales will count. If you care about music as art, or about musicians getting the recognition they deserve, consider making a 65p donation towards the cause. :)
(I got my copy from Play.com here. Of course, if you want to cancel out my vote... you can do that here...)
The question is, from some quarters, "who cares?" It's just a pop chart, irrelevant to the wider world, and has no bearing on the listening habits of those of us into less mainstream music. Right? It's not that simple though. The charts themselves are pretty irrelevant, but they influence factors such as radio play and news coverage, which in turn affect what the average person at home or in the street might know of current music.
Why does this matter? The problem is that if the country only ever sees music as manufactured pop, that damages prospects for the future. Kids growing up will be less interested in writing music, instead just wanting to be singers. Instrument makers and sellers will suffer. People taking music courses will drop and some schools and colleges will stop offering them. Independent record sellers, online and on the streets, will lose out to supermarkets who can pile up copies of the narrow range of music people know about. Music in the eyes of the public ceases to be an art form and becomes throwaway pop culture, unworthy of attention. What happens at the popular and commercial end does have a knock-on effect at the artistic and 'élite' end, in terms of the number of people involved, and the opportunities available to them.
It's also important that we're not forever being told what to buy. Instead of the traditional model of record companies investing in new bands the same way that banks invest in small businesses, the music industry instead now spends more money on marketing a few selected singers, who don't even perform their own songs, never mind play their own instruments. The result is less diversity, demand shaped by supply. Many worthy bands cannot get the exposure they deserve, while the people who could make a difference choose not to.
And recycling music so as to make it more immediately palatable to the paying public is again a negative move, buying short term success at the expense of damaging future prospects. And this song definitely ranks among the worst offenders: it was released less than a year ago, performed and thus popularised by Miley Cyrus who's arguably only famous because she has an influential musician father who was able to get her into a lucrative acting career, and written by someone else entirely. It's commoditisation of music at its worst.
This touches on another point that is important to me - the success of songs like that continues to support a growing tendency for the public to heap their praise upon the wrong person. If they like Joe's McElderry's song, they will say they like Joe. They won't necessarily realise that part of why they find the song catchy was because Ms Cyrus already drilled it into their subconscious earlier in the year. And they almost certainly won't appreciate the fact that Joe won't have played any of the other instruments on the track, or that the song was written by a pair of songwriters they've never heard of. They don't care about this stuff, which is exactly the problem. The figurehead gets all the praise while the truly creative people who did most of the work remain unheard of.
(We get this in computer game development too, where people often think the game was made by the publisher rather than the developer. eg. People thought Eidos made Tomb Raider. This sort of thing stops the developer from being able to develop their own brand or a reputation for quality, and makes it harder in turn for the consumer to predict the quality of what they'll be buying.)
And those who think that the X Factor's Simon Cowell won't mind, because Rage Against The Machine are on the same Sony label as he works for, are mistaken - Simon doesn't own Sony so he won't be seeing any money from the RATM sales. In fact, he is apparently furious about the campaign, claiming all the coverage of the RATM campaign is evidence of BBC bias against his show, which airs on the ITV channel. But this just shows the coverage is having an effect and raising awareness of music written and performed by real musicians, which will be a victory even if Rage Against The Machine only come in second.
Today is the last day when sales will count. If you care about music as art, or about musicians getting the recognition they deserve, consider making a 65p donation towards the cause. :)
(I got my copy from Play.com here. Of course, if you want to cancel out my vote... you can do that here...)
