Simon Cowell and the bestseller syndrome

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Now all the hoo-hah about this year’s Christmas number one record is over, I thought I’d take a rather more sideways look. Plenty of others have loudly proclaimed the (frankly rather ludicrous) politics of the campaign, a further set have seen it as a big dig at Simon Cowell for his terrible crime of making huge amounts of money from selling other people’s music and others – perhaps more quietly – have just gone out and bought the dreadful dirge that Mr Cowell is flogging to us this Christmas.

Instead of taking sides in the Joe vs. “Rage Against the Machine” debate (for the record I can’t work out which record I dislike the most); I thought I’d look at how Simon Cowell – and others in the music business – exploits what we might call the “bestseller syndrome”.

The “bestseller syndrome” is where we are more inclined to buy something because it is (or has been described as) a bestseller. Mail order marketers have known this for years – and when we say know in mail order we mean that we have tested it and shown that we get a measurably better response from calling something a bestseller than when we say nothing. And Cowell makes great use of this syndrome – watch how the guest acts on X-Factor are always introduced as “best-selling” artists and at how past volumes of records shifted is the central predictor of future success.

The new artists created by X-Factor are made to be bestsellers from the outset – none of this tedious audience-building is needed since the x-factor Christmas record is a bestseller. Throughout the programme the focus is on selling records – for the past year or two a charity record by the X-Factor finalists has been a feature thereby creating another number one record, another bestseller.

The point about the bestseller – and the psychological truth that Simon Cowell exploits – is that we are drawn to the safety of the bestseller. Just as in times past “nobody got fired for buying IBM”, we scuttle to the safety of numbers and buy the mass-produced tunes that Simon Cowell and others present as “popular music”. Indeed, this approach to music isn’t new as anyone reading the history of Motown (Berry Gordy is feted now but was a very similar businessman to Cowell) or the song factories of Tin Pan Alley would know. And we have always had a choice and the artists or song writers have always had a choice. We can either buy something else or nothing at all. And the artists can – as Gershwin did, as Elvis did, as the Beatles did and as Will Young appears to have done – the artists can break away from the production line once their name and fame are set.

But in truth we will return to the bestsellers – Simon Cowell and whoever comes after him in the popular music business will carry on manufacturing music and using brands and the bestseller to create a new generation of artists to “exploit”. And with each renewed generation there is a backlash – a call for “independent” music, for authenticity, for artistic control. And this backlash – taking advantage of the spirit of youthful (and not so youthful) rebellion – will see some artists and writers become rich and famous enough to achieve the accolade of “sell-out”. At which point they can appear as guests on X-Factor!

And tell me how many set out to be rock stars without even a passing thought for the cash?
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