Last.fm – the Blog

We’re nearing the end of the voting stage for our Christmas Chart Attack, our bid to break the stranglehold over the Christmas charts of reality TV winners and reformed pop puppets.

For the uninitiated, we found three up-and-coming bands causing a buzz on our hype chart (thanks to your scrobbles), and decided to try and take one of them to the top of the charts this December, in direct competition to the X Factor (for non-UK readers, it’s one of Simon ‘American Idol’ Cowell’s many shows where the general public get to pretend to be a real pop star for a nano-second before they’re dragged back into obscurity).

We’ve been counting your votes, and will announce the winner this coming Monday (19th November). To mark the occasion, we wanted to put on an event with the bands. But we wanted to make it special. So in the spirit of a fairly successful band from Liverpool, we decided to stage it on the roof of our office.

At lunchtime today, everyone in the office, a camera crew from Channel 4, and a select group of journalists and music biz types, all crowded onto the last.fm rooftop to watch Lucky Soul and Broadcast 2000 blast their sweet tunes across East London (Neon Plastix, with great timing, decided to split up the day before!)

It was a beautiful sunny day, and as the music wafted across Hoxton loads of people in the surrounding offices emerged at windows and on their own rooftops to watch. It was a great moment – as one Last.fm wag exclaimed, “Best. Lunchbreak. Ever.”

You can check out our pictures from the gig at the Events page, to be followed tomorrow by video footage. And get ready for the announcement of the winner on Monday at the Christmas Chart Attack group page, after which you can buy the winning track for a mere 40p and help us battle Cowell for the top spot this Christmas.