Very nearly; from my dear friends and regular viewers and posters here, the delightful Cuban Boys...

Here Top Of The New Year Pops James Masterton provides the history of the Xmas No1s:

"None of the reasons why it meant something to be Christmas Number One actually exist any more and it is now a game which exists in its own bubble, more in the minds of the press and public than the industry itself.

No, what now really matters is what you might call the New Year chart (...) The post Christmas week in 2009 saw 4,220,000 singles sold, rising to 4,747,000 in 2010, 5,451,000 in 2011 and then an incredible 5,696,000 at the end of 2012. Numbers the like of which the industry thought it would never see, and the only thing that will stop these totals being exceeded this year is if the rise of subscription streaming services is finally starting to bite chunks out of the sell-through market."

Yes clearly one of the problems is that people WOULD buy more and more were it not for the online ability to steal easily, whether it be through streaming like Spotify (miniscule royalty payments) or pure robbery illegal downloading or - what sadly I and many others do - free listening on demand through You Tube (the best SEARCH facility).

JK2006 wrote:
Yes clearly one of the problems is that people WOULD buy more and more were it not for the online ability to steal easily, whether it be through streaming like Spotify (miniscule royalty payments) or pure robbery illegal downloading or - what sadly I and many others do - free listening on demand through You Tube (the best SEARCH facility).

While agreeing with the stealing bit,do you not think the greed of record companies in creating monopolies in previous times left them with little public support?

Of course I'm in the strange position of being both artiste and label during my career Pat; yes, there is little public support for labels but they deserve more; they contributed an enormous amount to the breaking, finding and developing of artistes.

JK2006 wrote:
Of course I'm in the strange position of being both artiste and label during my career Pat; yes, there is little public support for labels but they deserve more; they contributed an enormous amount to the breaking, finding and developing of artistes.

They also contributed an enormous amount to their profits and expense accounts.
The bottom line is they got away with running a monopoly.Add to that the way parents were fleeced for thousands after young children went on file share sites.

Nobody's perfect Pat, not even me!

JK2006 wrote:
Nobody's perfect Pat, not even me!

Sure you're very close to perfect JK