Matt Cardle (Winner of the X Factor in 2010) has been dropped by Sony Music’s Columbia records. Cardle wasnt able to perform as well as Columbia were hoping!
Cardle hasn’t given up hope of a pop career yet though, tweeting: ‘I have parted ways with columbia records, we were heading in different directions, big news coming soon…. so excited! : ) love you all xx’.
Although Cardle’s winner’s single When We Collide made it to No.1, his next release Starlight clocked in at a disappointing No.185 and his final effort Amazing charted at No.84.
Matt why not just start create your own music and distributing it via RouteNote. Im sure you will make a lot more money!
A while ago it was announced that Simon Cowell has partnered with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith for a new reality talent show for, get this, the “world’s greatest DJs.” The concept is nothing new, but this time they have picked the wrong genre!
Simon thinks that DJs are the rockstars of their era. This may be the case, but will DJs want to sell their sole to the devil to get a shit 1 album record deal with Syco Records and Sony? Doubt it!
What a terrible idea! Plus, when you think it cant get any worse they mention that Will Smith is helping produce the series.
ITV has just agreed a new three year deal for the X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent with Simon Cowell’s Syco Entertainment and production company Fremantle Media.
There were rumours that Simon Cowell wouldn’t be doing the X Factor any more in the UK, but it just seems now that he might not be one of the judges.
“I am committed to making sure both shows get bigger and better every year,” said Cowell in a statement. “I have a lot to thank ITV for; they have been key in making The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent the UK’s biggest television shows.”
Peter Fincham, ITV director of television, added: “The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent are the shows that have helped define the last decade of television in the U.K. and have become more than just a talking point: they are a national obsession, and I’m delighted that our viewers can continue to enjoy them on ITV over the next three years.”
Labrint is a new up and coming sonwriter in the UK who has been growing at a rapid pace. Labrint has just released his feel good and chart friendly sing “Let The Sun Shine” which is being distributed by none other than Simon Cowell’s record label SYCO. Labrinth is currently working on his full album that you can expect later this year.
The song comes along with a very cool viral video that is getting a steady buzz on YouTube. Check it out below.
Americal Idol has now lost 3 out of the 4 judges from last season. Simon Cowell, Ellen Degeneres and Kara DioGuardi have now all left the judging panel from American Idol.
TMZ now announces that Jennifer Lopez is going to be the successor to Degeneres. I find it funny how the American Idol team think they are going to just change the judges and everyone is still going to watch the show. Keep an eye on the X Factor from Simon Cowell becoming the most watched TV show in the USA within the next 2 years!
I’ve only just been made aware of the story circulating the British press at the moment, that the X-Factor bosses have admitted to using post production vocal processors to alter the pitch of the notes that contestants were singing. This process is called “auto-tuning”.
Auto-tuning has been around for years and is now a very common part of music production. Most high end vocal processors come equipped with an auto-tuning unit. Anyone who has used any kind of auto-tuner would tell you that whilst they are a useful tool, the job they do is extremely subtle and it’s not really possible for an auto-tuner to make a bad singer sound like a good singer.
If someone is very far off the notes that they are trying to hit, auto-tune will not make them all of a sudden sound amazing. It will make them sound like some kind of absurd robot, as the video below should show you.
I dare say that the show’s producers didn’t even deliberately use this effect and simply had it on as part of their standard vocal processing, as is practice in a lot of post production for vocal work.
The press reaction to this has been completely mental and ludicrously misguided. I’ve not seen one newspaper that has consulted an audio expert thus far, and I doubt that any willl.
If you have spouted some uninformed toss on this subject then please take a moment to watch the videos below. One is of a girl who can sing with a bit of auto-tune assistance, the other is of a man who can’t. You should soon understand how quickly a bad singer is exposed, even with the miracle of auto-tune.
As if Simon Cowell didnt have a big enough ego already, he is getting ready to be knighted by the Queen in the Quees’s Birthday Honours List. The Britain’s Got Talent and X Factor judge, 50, is expected to be dubbed “Sir” for his charity work and generating millions for the British record industry.
Cowell surprisingly endorsed David Cameron to lead Britain in the final few days of campaigning. But Mr Brown had made no secret of his admiration for the mastermind behind the star-studded fundraising CD for the victims of this year’s Haiti earthquake. Cowell, who has even dined at No10 with Mr Brown and wife Sarah, helped to raise almost £1million for the appeal by getting the likes of Robbie Williams and Rod Stewart to help record Everybody Hurts.
Simon Cowell is ready to quit Britain’s Got Talent! It’s just another show he’s leaving to concentrate on The X Factor in America.
And he’s said it before!
After watching one of the insane acts on that show, Cowell said, “What the hell? I’m not going to be back next year. I’m not kidding. I can’t do this anymore.”
But he’s got a lot going on right now, so we understand the decision.
“I like the show, but it takes a hell of a lot of time and there are moments, I am not going to lie, where you are sitting there looking at these horrific acts and you actually think I genuinely can’t do this any more. But then you watch it back and you think it was all fun.
Can I see the show working without me? The answer is yes.
In terms of who would replace me, I don’t know to be honest with you. You have really got to know what you are talking about and you have really got to be able to spot a star.”
In a press release last week, Sony BMG has revealed a joint venture between themselves and Simon Cowell’s SYCO media group . This newly created entity will own all of the SYCO TV and media rights to the X-Factor and [insert country here]‘s Got Talent, as well as Cowell’s hit making cash-cow pop stars, including Susan Boyle and Leona Lewis.
As the first project under the new Syco banner, Fox Television announced (on January 11th) that it will launch the U.S. version of the worldwide hit TV show, The X Factor, in the fall of 2011. Cowell will serve as both executive producer and judge on the U.S. version of the show.
In the brief years since moving out of his mum and dad’s house aged 30, Cowell has worked with artists selling more than 180 million albums and delivered more than 150 No.1 records. In 2009, Cowell was named No. 1 in Hollywood Reporter’s Top 50 Most Powerful in Reality TV and one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top Entertainers of the Year, and has one of the most powerful and influential figures in pop music, having fired literally hundreds of young hopefuls up the pop charts with the perfect storm of his TV format and Sony label tie-in.
The new company consolidates the close relationship between Cowell and Sony, and will doubtless mean more years of gushing, well meaning, easily herded young vocalists being fired out of the high-powered marketing cannon into our faces.
The announcement was out by 2:30pm on Sunday, and leaked onto the internet long before the 7pm embargo that the Official Charts Company had set in their press release – Rage Against The Machine are No.1 in the UK this Christmas. Theirs is the first Xmas No.1 to reach that position on only digital sales. A milestone that will pass pretty much unnoticed in the turmoil surrounding the campaign that won it for them.
They are the beneficiaries of a campaign launched by Jon and Tracy Morter, mainly on Facebook but touted around most of the net by anyone who agrees with Charlie Brooker that Joe McElderry’s (the X Factor Winner) track is a “…pissweak vocal doodle… a listless announcement on a service station Tannoy; an advert for buttons; a fart in a clinic; a dot on a spreadsheet.” Reactions to the news have been predictable in their variation: the usual slew of vituperative comments on Facebook and YouTube crowing over Joe/the X-Factor/Simon Cowell’s failure – hilariously highlighting their “Number Two” ranking, journalists pointing out the disappointing irony that both tracks belong to Sony; the machine has anticipated your rebellion and is profiting from it.
This doesn’t really detract from the success of the campaign for me. What the Morters managed to do was give the motley rabble of alternative music fans a harlequin flag to rally behind. In his inimitable way, Mr. Brooker was making the point that Rage’s song is emotional, impassioned music for it’s own sake, unlike the X-Factor single, which is part of a vehicle created by Simon Cowell and others to make money from music
RATM are obviously very pleased about all this and are planning a free gig next year to say thankyou to all their fans:
“We’re very, very ecstatic and excited about the song reaching the number one spot and I just want to say we want to thank everyone for participating in this incredible, organic grassroots campaign.”
“It’s more about the spontaneous action taken by young people in the UK to topple this very sterile pop monopoly,” he continued. “When young people decide to take action they can make what’s seemingly impossible possible.”
This is a positive, encouraging response, and I’d love to see them make a comeback, but am I alone in thinking that the campaign was more anti-X-Factor than pro RATM? Good on them, plucky little 40 year old punks that they are – but they’ve moved on. The campaign seemed more about rejecting what is fed to the masses, the point that is covered in ‘Killing in the name of’, and was so succinctly put by Paul Weller – “The public wants what the public gets”. It’s a complaint that, well intentioned as Joe McElderry may be in himself, to the RATM buyers, he is a grinning mask stretched over the pitiless metal visage of Cowell and Co.’s marketing machine – a machine so successful that it has made even the process of disappointing hundreds of hopeful young people profitable, and reinstated the pillory as a form of national public entertainment, whilst simultaneously chiding us for expecting the worst from the pitiable social outcasts they drag up specifically for our ridicule, and profiting from their talent too. Yes, in the flurry of excitement over ‘Ragemas’, everyone’s ignoring the fact that the Simon monster has got it’s vicelike grip around the No.1 album slot.
Cowell’s response to his defeat is that of a true shark; he offered the couple that orchestrated the campaign a job. He told the Mirror: “I’m genuinely impressed by the campaign they have run. It has been a good campaign with no dirty tricks and without funding. They have been passionate and worked hard.” “This is their first attempt at putting out a record and they got a Christmas No 1, so they have not done badly at all.
Good, Simon, magnanimity becomes you.
“I wanted them to come and work for us. I was deadly serious but they haven’t taken me up on the offer.”
Wait… what?
“I now realise I’ve taken too much for granted. I have got to hold my hands up. I accept there are people that don’t like The X-Factor.”
Either he’s a master of dead-pan sarcasm to rival Humphrey Lyttleton, or his head is so far in the sand he can taste magma… Either way, he’s relentless – the mob are at the castle gates, pitchforks in hand, and he condescends to ask them if they’d like a job moving hay.
I think my favourite reaction to the whole debacle came from poor, naive little Joe, whose reaction on listening to ‘Killing in the Name Of’ was printed in the Sun:
“They can’t be serious! I had no idea what it sounded like. It’s dreadful and I hate it. How could anyone enjoy this? Can you imagine the grandmas hearing this over Christmas lunch?
“I wouldn’t buy it. It’s a nought out of ten from me. Simon Cowell wouldn’t like it. [Why Joe, what a brown nose you have!] They wouldn’t get through to boot camp on The X Factor – they’re just shouting.”
He really doesn’t get it! It’s wonderful! In his 18 year old little bubble, the world is really full of Unicorns, kittens and leprechauns snuggling rainbows. Let’s look forward in time ten years to when the phone in his Kensington apartment has bizarrely failed to ring for the sixth consecutive month. Let’s think about the moment when the first crack appears in that illusion he’s holding right now. It might even be next year, when the next X-Factor winner gets the food bowl next to Simon’s chair at dinner, and his is pushed down a row. Let’s understand that this is why there is no long tail on the manufactured, novocaine smelling, surgical pink pop that gets churned out by the Pop-Idol mill – there’s no emotion in it; no real understanding about music, no desire to communicate something passionate and unique in a way that makes the financial gain irrelevant. The art of music only exists when it transcends the material and is a thing for and of itself, and that’s what people love it for. Joe, Simon and Co. are using people’s base tendency to buy what is put in front of them to make money, not to make music.
[On the other hand, we here at RouteNote are providing a service to the underappreciated, hard working independent artists, and we would very much like to distribute your tracks for you, and make your music make money for you.]
So what can we take from the whole affair? It’s good that some musicians are at number one, rather than a marketing team wielding the bludgeon of a multi million pound marketing vehicle and weekly TV show. It’s good that the balkanised, fractured section of the public that loves music, be it Grime, Hip Hop, Metal or good old fashioned anti-corporate Rock have got together and taken charge of the charts for a week. It’s very good that the campaign to achieve this has also raised more than £70,000 for charity. But. It’s not sustainable – the people that like listening to music rather than staying in watching gumph on telly of a Saturday night generally like too many different types of music for this chart domination to be a regular occurrence; but perhaps we can feel reassured that there is still a music buying, music loving public out there, prepared to pony up for something they believe in. The artists that really care about what they’re playing will always have real listeners – ones that will buy them a beer and say thanks after the gig, and reminisce in the pub after their band has broken up. I don’t think anyone will mourn the passing of Joe McElderry’s musical career over a pint of real ale in the Islington Arms. I hope that the campaign organisers can repeat their feat, and that next year we can buy a record from a great new artist on an independent label; a proportion of the profits from which will go to support a charity, or to supporting more up-and-coming artists. Maybe, and I realise that this is a wistful, hopeless dream, just maybe that song could be Rolf Harris’ ‘Wonderful Christmas Pig’ [no derogatory comments about Susan Boyle, please].
