[gaius]

I'm talking about the single-buyers. Lots of people watch these talent shows just for the trainwrecks. The people who take the X-factor seriously are the sort of people who'd watch a show just because it's presented by Ant and Dec... The people who buy whatever mass-produced focus-grouped auto-tuned rubbish the singles chart is normally full of.

I'd imagine the other sort of person who'd buy a single by "Joe" is the same demographically who'd buy one by say Cliff Richard.

[Blasa]

Weird, I always though of xfactor single-buyers as young people (future pop wannabees) hoping to catch a bit of the star factor of the people they had been voting for.

Looking for more data I came across this

http://www.bpi.co.uk/members-area/article/bpi-statistical-ha...

It suggests that in 2008 95% of singles were downloaded. So I doubt the weather had much to do with it. Still no demographics on who actually buys cds normally though.