Rage Against the X-factor Machine

For the first time since X-Factor started in Britain it is not the winner of the TV-show that owns the number one spot on the christmas single hit list. In stead a 17 year old song by Rage Against the Machine is topping the chart.

How did this happen? Well … to put it short: Facebook happened.

Interesting example of social media and consumers changing the way things work.

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In beating X Factor winner Joe McElderry to the Christmas number one, anarchic rockers Rage Against the Machine have pulled off one of the biggest shocks in UK chart history.

The campaign to break Simon Cowell’s stranglehold on the festive charts was started by Jon Morter, a 35-year-old part-time rock DJ and his wife Tracy, 30, who set up a Facebook page in November.

“Fed up with Simon Cowell’s latest karaoke act being Christmas number one? Me too…” they wrote, saying they wanted to break the “X Factor monotony”.

Their rallying cry struck a chord and the campaign took off at the start of December, attracting hundreds of thousands of fans as the story snowballed.

Read BBC’s coverage here

See the facebook group here