Chumbawamba? WTF?

Hmmmm... the same record companies that are trying to stop you from illegal filesharing are using the data from those downloads to figure out what people want to hear. A company named BigChampagne is helping them do the research.

Here's the money shot...

"We actually got kind of cute about it and told them, 'Look, we have a theory about why your business is in decline now. We call it the Chumbawamba Factor.'" If you remember the song "Tubthumbing"-- the one that goes, "I get knocked down/ But I get up again"-- you may recall that the album, Tubthumping, and actually every other album that the one-time punk band ever recorded, sounded nothing like their big hit.

"Chumbawamba sold a lot of records, and every single one of them ended up in a milkcrate at a yard sale, six months after it was purchased. And what we told [the record labels] is, 'Look, you had a great long run of business essentially built on regrettable impulse buys,'" says Garland. "'That was a great business, make no mistake. You owed much of your success to that. But it engendered a lot of cumulative ill-will with the customer.'"

If it puts an end to "Tubthumping", can it be all bad?