Free RATM UK show for Christmas number one

To ramp up the chances of Rage Against The Machine’s ‘RageFactor’ campaign to beat X-Factor winner Joe McElderry and the show’s main-man Simon Cowell to number one in the UK singles charts at Christmas being successful, the band have announced they will play a free “thank you” concert sometime in 2010 if they get the number one spot.

For the last month or so Rage have been pushing their popular anti-establishment song Killing In The Name as a digital download single, for the Christmas number one spot as a statement against reality TV talent shows and the perception that shows like X-Factor, along with commercial radio, are telling the public what to listen to by narrowing the scope of what they broadcast in order to make money.

Bookmakers have suspended betting on the outcome of the charts on Sunday December 20, the last chart before Christmas, but Rage took the number one spot on the previous chart on December 13, and at the time of the mid-week sales figures on December 16 they were ahead of McElderry by over 60,000 sales. McElderry released his single on CD this week in the hope that this will generate a lot of sales as “stocking filler” gifts for Christmas.

There is a serious side to the campaign though, not just defeating pop music. All proceeds from the sales of Killing In The Name go to Shelter, the charity for homeless people in the UK.

Killing In The Name is available from iTunes, Play.com and Amazon. It is cheapest at Amazon at £0.29, which sparked a debate over whether sales from the online retail giant would count towards the charts because of the £0.40 limit on song prices. This limit only applies to the dealer price of a song, i.e. the price Amazon paid for it in order to be able to sell it to consumers. The price customers pay is entirely at the retailer’s discretion and doesn’t affect chart eligibility.

Official RageFactor Website
Official Rage Against The Machine Website
Official Shelter Website

Written by Jukebox:Metal Admin
More: Release News, Rage Against The Machine