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.

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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.”

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The song comes along with a very cool viral video that is getting a steady buzz on YouTube. Check it out below.

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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!

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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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVxF7EHbnMI

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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.

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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.

Simon said:

“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.”

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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.

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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.

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• Auto-Tune X-Factor Shocker!!! – August 23, 2010
• SYCO – Simon Cowell and Sony Create Joint Venture – January 26, 2010

Ignoring the irony of promoting an anti-mainstream, anti-capitalist message by advocating a purchase, it’s difficult to understand who this campaign is intended to make a difference to. The campaign page claims that it’s not making a personal attack against the high-waisted one, and objectionable as alternative music fans may find Mr. Cowell’s brand of pop and opinionated self righteousness, he’s not the source of the problem. He was instrumental in creating a format which appealed to the appetite of the masses, one that allows the public to be involved in a very emotional and challenging journey for a group of pretty young things, and he’s succeeded with the development of that format to an incredible extent. If his Wikipedia entry is to be believed, then he went from being deeply in debt and living with his parents at age 30, to earning $50,000,000 in 2008. That’s $5,700 for every hour of every day, including while he sleeps! If I were earning that sort of money I would wear the silliest trousers I could find, and wouldn’t give a stuff about anyone else’s opinion.

The X-Factor winners have all been glad to win, have all got the bite at the cherry of fame that they wanted, a lot of people that stay in and watch telly and call TV hotlines on a Saturday night have been mildly entertained, and a lot of bland pop music has been sold. What’s the problem? The singles charts haven’t been of interest to anyone who really takes an interest in music since “Mistletoe and Wine” was at the top for Xmas ’88. Mr. Blobby was at number one for Christmas in ’93, for goodness sake. Mr. Blobby! Even 15 years ago, the cool kids were listening to John Peel, not the chart show. You don’t like the X-Factor? That’s what the power button on your TV is for… Go to a gig instead; I promise you won’t find any Susan Boyle fans there.

This is what makes the internet, and the digital music revolution, and the availability of universally available music distribution so great. Everything is available to you equally easily – OK you might have stuff that you don’t want to buy thrust in your face, but it’s the advertising that makes the greater part of the services on the net financially viable. Spread your negative message on Facebook, but realise that it’s the ad revenue from the things you dislike facilitating the social networking vehicle you’re enjoying the use of – your revenge? Ignoring them. Musical evangelism is no different to any other kind of hectoring ‘I know better’ behaviour. If you are right, then you will succeed – like Simon Cowell has – otherwise you’ll just have to accept that most people don’t think like you. This, essentially is what Simon Cowell’s typically tetchy and short tempered response to the campaign was saying. ‘I’m a millionare 100 times over, what you’re doing doesn’t affect me, only this hopeful young man who I’m exploiting, and the show is successful because the majority of the public like it, so you can’t dismiss the majority.’ Don’t get me wrong, I dislike manufactured pop as much as the next Generation Y-er (for all that we’re a disparate band), and I understand the frustration, as does RATM’s Tom Morello:

“I think people are just fed-up of being spoonfed some overblown sugary ballad that sits on top of the charts. It’s a little dose of anarchy for the holidays, it’s good for the soul. It’s this big machinery that puts forward a particular kind of music which represents a particular kind of listener. There are a lot of people that don’t feel represented by it and this Christmas in the UK they’re having their say.”

Take comfort in the fact that the pop-puppet you find irksome has never heard of the bands you like, and inhabits a different sphere to you – you’re unlikely to bump into him in the crowd at the Download festival.

The campaign’s Facebook page endorses giving money to Shelter, a homelessness charity – maybe if we all send Simon a Myspace message he’ll donate half the revenue from the next series of X-Factor to them, he can’t need the money – especially if the rumour that he’s generating 70% of Sony’s music income is true.

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• Rage At No.1 – December 21, 2009
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• ITV Sign Three Year Agreement to Show The X Factor and Britains Got Talent in the UK – October 20, 2010
• American Idol Lose 3 Judges But Still Think Jennifer Lopez is Going To Be the Ultimate Replacement – September 6, 2010
• Auto-Tune X-Factor Shocker!!! – August 23, 2010