Sometimes I wonder if there really is any influence to be had with social media, until now I remained agnostic, my road to Damascus came in the form of the UK Christmas number 1 this year which was dragged back out of history, namely, the tune ‘Killing in the Name of’ by Rage Against the Machine.
Oddly, I actually have this CD in my car (pic related), it is one of the heavier ones I listen to sometimes (The Exploited, Slayer, and Fugazi provide alternatives). The big deal though, is that it was two guys in the UK who thought up this idea of chart-busting ‘X Factor’ in 2009, they were fed up with the near definite #1 Christmas Hit being whoever wont X-Factor so they decided that they would campaign for Rage Against the Machine, on twitter the #RATM and others were showing up everywhere, and in the end it took more than a half a million willing participants to pull of this master stroke.
This is a serious commercial issue, because …