actually bit better (for him) £150,000

the rest of the sum is spent on marketing and work for his image....

Well done to the nobs who started this internet campaign.

They must be really chuffed with themselves tonight at making their point and giving us the worst Xmas No 1 since Mr Blobby.

Maybe next yeea Damo can start a campaign to get Project A to the Xmas No 1

It depends on what is spent, and I suspect that a lot of money will have been spent already in trying to get to no 1 for christmas - didn't they drop the price of the download to 29p for this weekend ?

My cousin is a professional guitarist and has been since the early 80s when he did a lot of sessions work for all sorts of bands, most of whom were never heard of again but a typical "£1million" deal would be for an album for some fresh-faced kids, they would be put up in a rented house or apartment and spend some expensive weeks in rehearsal, then some very expensive days in a studio. They would then be taken out on tour to promote their album via shop appearances (transport, security, overnight stays) or gigs (lots of associated costs), or pay for some studio time to do some remote radio studio interviews.

For all of this time their production company would be picking up all of the bills, housing, food, security, travel, clothes - and of course if you ask an 18 year odl kid if he wants to blow a few grand in TopShop he'll snap your arm off...

...what they doesn't realise until the end of the year is that everything is accounted for and put on the tab
, that hotel room they trashed for fun, the bar bills from every outlet of Holiday Inn that they used on that UK promo tour (a lot of production companies seem to use Holiday Inn, and not the Express version either) - everything goes onto the account and just like a Ltd Company a balance sheet is drawn up at the end of the first year.

Most bands are in a deficit situation by then, their production company make sure that they are in a deficit situation, sure they've had a ball for twelve months and they have been drawing a bloody good salary from their advance for that year, but now they owe their production company - and their negotiating situation for the second album is poor, they've been promoting for a year, probably haven't written much of their own stuff (if they write at all) and all of the good stuff from their catalogue was used on the first album - the second album deal is where they really get screwed.

My cousin has a thousand stories of people you've never heard of or have forgotten long ago being screwed in this way time and time again, and every time they get a booking for another studio session they hope that the young kids they are playing for are still believing their own hype and turn up at the session very late (or not at all), still unaware that they have to pay for all the lost time.

Yeah, it wasnt a great shock reading this. This figure was in the Sunday Times today as they had an interview in their News Review section with Joe ......I have forgotten his surname, well anyway they asked him what his feelings were on the fact he was getting such a small amount in reality. He didnt really give an answer and just seemed to move very quickly on to the next subject matter

I've forgotten his surname as well

The other thing to note about the industry is that they are very, very good at PR and do not hesitate to employ the best, and most expensive agencies - all of which only fills them full of even more bollax than usual, your well publicised "Five Album Deal" for instance will be a one album deal with options for the next four, in other words they can't leave the label if the company want them to release more material but the company can drop them like a stone at any time.

Its not new, its how the industry has worked for decades and it won't change - you only have to read what happened to the pair who were Stealers Wheel when they were huge and selling multiple millions of records, only to disappear and for it to take Gerry Rafferty five years to sort out the legal crap during which time he daren't even write a song or hum one in the bath in case it was seized and used by his former record company - his partner Joe Egan (the more talented of the two) had to wait even longer and eventually, after one incredible solo album, left the business entirely and has not written or sung another song since.

Unfortunately you're right, the only ones who can are the ones from my generation

Good news! Hate pop culture, reality shows and the 15 minutes of fame wannabes that go with it. RATM have been, and will be around for many decades longer...don't think the reason why really needs spelling out

So, what you're saying is that neither are indy f00kers?

I've been corrected they are both part of SONY so in reality the record label wins hands down!
TBH i couldn't give plop i've watched Take That Live The Circus this weekend and it was quality!!

Has anyone considered that by actually having a competitive race for Xmas no. 1 Cowell has probably sold more copies of his artists' record than he would have otherwise, thus lining pockets further, number one or not?

Still, I quite like the "victory" even though it really isn't much of one.

I backed neither in this cash cow.

It seemed to me like The Has Beens against The Wannabe.

Zero interest.

I was amused by the irony of people buying a record they probably don't like that much to make sure another record they don't doesn't get a meaningless title, and all because people don't like to be told what to buy.

Oh hang on...

Not the point, I own every RATM album, but I paid to download it again purely because I don't like having untalented idiots like Joe McGaylord rammed down my throat at this time every year.