After the success of the Rage Against the Machine for christmas number one campaign – an excellent example of collective action utilising one of the few real powers we have left in modern society, that of the consumer – there’s now an effort to ‘get a GENUINE unsigned band into the charts‘.

As I write, the group on Facebook has over 5,000 members, around 30 admins, and I have no idea how many suggested artists. Unfortunately, I believe it is this level of interest that dooms the experiment to failure.

The RATM campaign was coordinated by two people and had a single clear aim – to make a song number one in order to send a message about the dominance of TV talent shows and the death of the UK charts as a regular source of good music – and asked supporters to do just one thing. That is why it was successful.

The unsigned artists campaign, in contrast, asks too much of too many people and is not as easy to communicate to those who aren’t already invested in this kind of action.

Above all, it misses the point that the RATM campaign was a negative campaign. All those who bought ‘Killing in the Name’ did so as an act of protest. It may seem that it was positive as it sought to make a song number one, but it was a positive means to a negative end – to stop the winner of that TV talent show yet again reaching number one at christmas.

I’m sure the coordinators of the unsigned bands campaign will argue that it’s also an attempt to send a message, but there’s simply no clear recipient. It will also suffer because everyone will remain loyal to the artist they suggest, and if they don’t like the song that’s picked they just won’t buy it. The strength of feeling against that TV talent show sadly isn’t matched in this case, and it was that which drove us to come together in December 2009.

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