The battle for the Christmas number one slot continues to heat up, with Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name extending its lead over Joe McElderry’s The Climb.

According to sales figures from the Official Charts Company yesterday, the American band’s 1993 hit had opened up a lead of about 10% over The Climb, the debut single from X Factor winner McElderry, after two days of sales.

OCC figures today show that Killing In The Name has now extended that lead to around 60%, selling another 92,000 copies yesterday to bring its total for the week so far to more than 175,000.

The Climb has sold around 110,000 copies so far but is expected to receive a massive boost today when the CD single goes on general sale around the country.

While the singles market is now overwhelmingly made up of download sales, X Factor Christmas singles traditionally sell strongly on CD.

oh my god this is more than anyone could of expected!

well, tomorrow and friday should be really interesting. i think it's gonna be extremely close by sunday.

thanks for these stats j.

It amazes me that anyone would voluntarily buy the Climb, whereas I could happily listen to RATM all day.

This song should be number one for Christmas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

We're no strangers to love....

No ne saw this coming. That is a huge lead and TBH I am not sure if Joe can claw it back right now.

He should sell over 100k of his CD but RATM look set to sell over 90k themselves today and they are already 65k ahead of Joe on downloads and Joe has started to fall while RATM have raisen again.

People will look back in years to come and say to their grandchildren:

"I remember when Joe Whathisname was beaten to the Christmas number one. Oh, you should have seen Simon Cowell's face. He was humiliated."

And your grandchildren will reply:

"Shut up, grandad, I'm trying to play this cool new game on my Playstation 6."

No they will probably respond, "F*CK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!"

I plan to have more exciting stories to tell them

joe mcelderry will be no. 1. it's inevitable.
the ratm campaign has done amazingly well but it won't cope with the cd and download single sales combined of 'the climb'.

Am I the only person who thinks that even if Rage gets no.1 on Sunday, Joe could just overtake them the week after? He would still of missed out on the Christmas no.1 though.

The Rage single will see a harsh decline in sales after this week certainly, as the campaign was about waiting until Sunday to buy it, aimed at this week's rundown.

I imagine the X-Factor song will continue selling next week, especially as the CD version makes for an easy stocking-filler.

Next year the song chosen should be Informer. What's more festive than Snow?

That would be good. I hate the fact every year Simon Cowell basically hands all winners a Christmas #1 as if he's some kind of music god!

I do however really like Joe and it's a shame it's happening to him - the first winner i actually like . Shame it isn't Alex or Leons year

If Joes single is overpriced like every single other XF related single (£3.99) i think he will struggle to be honest.

Nobody really remembers their first single anyway with that much affection, as it tends to be a cheesy ballad that seems out of kilter with their subsequent material which is more 'them'; look at last year's winner going from a syrupy generic take on Hallelujah, to singing about bad boys and having Flo Rida on board.

Although I could see Joe continuing down the cheesy ballad road, as he hasn't got much of the Justin Timberlake about him.

It will inevitably decline by huge proportions next week but that's to be expected. The Campaign was for Christmas number 1.

2 days ago Id have agreed with you.
BUT, Joe only sold about 33K downloads yesterday, as opposed to RATM selling about 92K.
His total now stands at 110K, RATM 175K.

It will be VERY close, but there is every chance RATM will do it.

(source of sales, buzzjack and music week).

I'm putting a pound on Screaming Trees being no.1 at Easter.

But, can we use a pro-rata calculation? Would it not be fair to assume that most people who will buy the RATM single will have bought it in the first few days of the week, as they are buying it for the purposes of a campaign? Whereas Joe's single will probably get its highest sales on Saturday.

Is this the best youtube video ever?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AYU...layer_embedded

Terrifying when the mouth is superimposed onto the girls. The Irish kids have never been so in tune before.

That's the whole point. The campaign is to stop the X Factor winner getting the Christmas no.1. If Joe gets to no.1 the week after, nobody will mind/care.

Well yes, if they lose momentum, but RATM have increased sales yesterday, they sold 88K sunday and monday, 92K yesterday alone.
I editted out my pro-rata as it was wrong. Joe will need about 40% cd sales...based on sales so far.
As I said, it's going to be very close!.

Perhaps so but X-Factor is scheduled precisely so that whoever wins it gets the Xmas number 1 almost by default. They've scheduled it like that for that reason so blocking them even for a week is a good statement.

Nothing we do will affect Cowell et al in their wallets, they already have too much money to care one way or the other about sales. What this is about is image. The marketing machine behind X-Factor have been ploughing money into ensuring they get to No1 at Xmas. If we can block that with nothing more than our grassroots campaign then that is publicly humiliating to them and that's worth more than money.

Let’s start the campaign, they’re a band much more deserving of a number 1 than RATM imo!!

Wake up people – both the Climb and RATM are being released by the same record company (Sony BMG). If you want to protest don’t buy either – all you are doing is boosting the profits of Simon Cowell’s record group either way!

Did anyone here put a bet on Rage at long odds, out of interest? They were something like 100/1 at one point I heard.