Charity Singles

December 21, 2009 in Music, Rants | 1 comment

I’ve obviously been living under a rock for a while because I wasn’t really following the whole RATM vs XFactor war to the XMAS number one, but the power of Facebook and the people won out in getting RATM to the top of the charts.

I was indifferent to this; I do like some RATM songs but feel that neither the producers of the XFactor or RATM really need the cash that badly. I’m not into buying singles in all honesty – I’d rather get the album if I like the band. Anyway, that said, I had to eat my words yesterday when I was told that RATM were donating the proceeds of their single to Shelter. This, I very much approve of, but leads me to a new subject.

Charity singles.

Now, this is absolutely NOT a stab at RATM donating their proceeds to charity. Fair play to them I say, after all the single wasn’t released as a charity single, so that’s pretty damn awesome.

No, my gripe is with charity singles being released in general. I know some singles are produced free of charge, mixed free of charge, the singers don’t make anything, yada yada and that’s fine. But, with a lot of charity singles, there are still fees to pay, which means that only a relatively small percentage of the cost of each single goes to charity.

And often the single is cheesy crap!

Surely it would be better to take your three quid and donate it to the charity instead of lining the pockets of various record companies, with the charity only getting maybe 10p?

Thoughts, anyone?

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  1. Mallory on December 27, 2009 at 10:22 pm

    Ugh. Rage mode has totally been activated.

    Believe it or not, I’ve never actually heard of these ‘charity singles’ before — And I must admit that I’m glad I haven’t.

    The idea of releasing music purely for charity seems wrong, somehow, which I realise is ironic … But if you think about it in an ‘artistic’ sort of way, it makes sense, because music is generally supposed to MEAN something.

    In my opinion, it should NEVER be a way to simply raise money … Whether for yourself, for the record company, or for charities.

    That’s the main reason why I can’t stand ‘singers’ like Miley Cyrus — Even she herself has no idea what type of music she makes, or even what her lyrics are about!

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