Happy Fucking Xmas spags

[Cain]

According to BBC news last night Simon Cowell's perfectly formed (and bland as all hell) turdling and RATM are both signed to Sony.

I laughed my god damn ass off.

I did wonder about this.

He's done that two years running now.

[Triple Zero]

Um. The public do choose what's in the charts. That's sort of the point of them.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

no.

[Cain]

He's right.

If by choose he means "radio stations all over the country are given a highly limited selection of music made by the Big Three who basically control the entire industry and you, the consumer are allowed to choose inbetween this range for the songs you like the most."

In that sense, people have a choice.  Kind of like how everyone has a free and fair choice at elections, despite the only parties which have any chance of winning all being, essentially, the same party with minor variations.

Hurrah for freedom of choice!  You can choose anything you like, so long as it doesn't matter.

[Triple Zero]

and, dunno how it's in the UK, but buying airplay doens't even need to cause consumers to buy the singles, as in the Netherlands charts are also rated on airplay itself in addition to single sales.

Guess I'll have to grant em it's more efficient that way.

[bds]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the British charts are decided by how many people buy the single, based on downloads and physical sales. Now you can attach to that whatever bullshit you like, but as far as I'm concerned, that means the public decide what's in the charts.

But yeah, Cain's right. The only songs that have a hope in hell are those played on mainstream radio stations, and the only songs chosen to get played on there are pretty much the exact same. But still. Some people like all that pop shit.

[Cain]

Yeah, airplay isn't taken into account here.

As for radio stations...lets put it this way.  I can get about, oh, 15 FM radio stations around here.  Four of those belong to the BBC, and the rest belong to three companies.  It's pretty much the same all over the country, and its pretty obvious if you travel, because each company has its own playlist, which stations are never allowed to deviate from.  One specializes in modern pop and "R&B", one specializes in sort of 80s/90s stuff which might include a few alright songs, but otherwise sticks to the pop songs from that period, and the third used to do dance music, but its been ages since I listened to them and they might have gone out of business by now.

And that's it. Oh, Radio 1 (owned by the BBC) might play a few unheard of tracks in the evening and on their specialist shows...but listening to the latter usually means staying up until 3am.

[bds]

I reckon the iPlayer and similar online catch up things have done wonders for the unsigned/specialist shows though, you can listen to them whenever you want.

But yes, your point still stands. Radio stations are generally the suck.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Here's how it works:

The industry decides how many discs to press for each act. The act with the most number of discs pressed is no.1

The radio is then told which discs had the most pressed.

The media informs the public which discs are popular^tm

The public then buys the correct number of discs.

Much moar efficient than allowing the public to decide for themselves and guessing how many discs to press.