Like i said before, i'm not arsed about being number one.  Not paid attention to the charts since i was about 15.

Someone get a message through to Captain Snort
That they better start assembling the boys from the fort.
And keep Mrs. Honeyman right out of sight,
'Cos there's gonna be riot down in Trumpton Tonight.

Sorry Gibbi, got to disagree with you. I don't think there's too many bands, or artists, that are out there to be number one. Take the cribs for example, they don't want to be number one, it's more about the music and sticking to their principles. Or as i saw Guy Garvey of Elbow say recently, if we wanted to make million selling number ones, we could, but we'd have to abandon our principles and we won't do that.

I think there's more musicians thatare devoted to their art than to hitting the top of the charts. They count for nothing, other than showing who the most marketable acts are. Every now and then, the two coincide and you a band that are popular and good, like the Arctics. It's very rare though

From Manchester with love

Crossovers happen more these days though.  20 years ago, 'Indie' stuff rarely troubled the chart compilers, whereas today bands that are classed as 'Indie' probably do quite well in the mainstream charts.  Probably to do with the fact that not as many sales are needed to do this.

Someone get a message through to Captain Snort
That they better start assembling the boys from the fort.
And keep Mrs. Honeyman right out of sight,
'Cos there's gonna be riot down in Trumpton Tonight.

I'd say quite the opposite, I think there were far more successful 'indie' bands 20 years ago, the main reason was there were far more independent record labels. Look back to the mid to late 80's and loads of bands were considered 'indie', The Smiths, New Order, Happy Mondays etc etc, too many to mention. The difference is that now 'indie' is a term for a type of music rather than it's original meaning.

I agree that anyone with a guitar these days is classed as Indie.  Twenty years ago you needed to sell far more copies to get into the charts, but not now.  The Smiths might have sold 20,000 copies of a single but only reached Number 25 in the charts, whereas these days you sell 5,000 copies and you will probably be in the top 5.

Someone get a message through to Captain Snort
That they better start assembling the boys from the fort.
And keep Mrs. Honeyman right out of sight,
'Cos there's gonna be riot down in Trumpton Tonight.

Predicting false dawns since August '07.

Hmmm.  I don't really like downloads, i class them as not real, or inferior.

Someone get a message through to Captain Snort
That they better start assembling the boys from the fort.
And keep Mrs. Honeyman right out of sight,
'Cos there's gonna be riot down in Trumpton Tonight.

Why? Someone has gone to the trouble of getting the song and is playing it.  The downloads recorded as sales are paid for.  The downloader goes out of their way to secure the recording same as someone walking ino HMV and buying a record/cd. 

It doesn't matter how you get the song.

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http://www.petitiononline.com/savesven/petition.html

I don't like em.

Someone get a message through to Captain Snort
That they better start assembling the boys from the fort.
And keep Mrs. Honeyman right out of sight,
'Cos there's gonna be riot down in Trumpton Tonight.