What if the X Factor was a single programme?

Net, Blogs and Rock n Roll reports on a government-sponsored music marketing event earlier this week, where Scott Cohen posed a thought experiment: if the X Factor cut to the chase, what would happen?

[If they] presented only one show in each series, saying "we've done the research, we've done the auditions, we've consulted audiences, and here's the winner"? The result would be the same — a winner like Leona Lewis — but would this winner sell as many records? Answer: No, because it's the backstage access, the community that grows around the competitors, and the story of the winner's rise that engages the audience interest. They make an emotional connection with the artist and the song, and buy it to help it succeed.

But Leona Lewis might be a bad example, because she at least has a talent that might have found a market without ITV's involvement. What about the artists who flop straight away, or have a shelf-life shorter than gently-heated clotted cream in the tropics? Alex Parks, David Sneddon, even Gates and Chico - this emotional attachment proved to be incredibly shallow, didn't it?

Cohen is suggesting that record companies need to build an emotional attachment, but seems to miss the point that every successful band ever has worked through a visceral, emotional connection - that's what the very definition of fandom is. If the music industry really needs to be told that it needs to connect the music to the audience's lives in some ways, then they really are screwed. It should be obvious, like telling a butcher's conference to avoid investing in advertising in Vegetarian Quarterly.

Ironically, it's the twittery like the X Factor, where the connection is real but slight, that has led to the development of so much record industry output that has no link to people's lives and loves and passions - the Javine Hiltons and the One True Voices and their fellows in the dumpbin of history. Because the music industry has misread the success of Girls Aloud, and assumed that familiarity rather than emotional attachment is the driving factor in their success, and invited Jordan to make a record with Peter Andre.

There's a sidenote, too, about how much use blogs are:

Rhodri Marsden gave an example of YouTube success (and blogging) which led to the kind of discovery that doesn't stick. With £500 Rhodri commissioned a video to promote the song he'd recorded as The Schema. Having notched up 250,000 plays on YouTube and blogged about his progress.

He was naturally eager to find out how this impressive attention-share would convert into success on iTunes. The answer: 58 sales.

But then Marsden might have misunderstood what he was selling. He wasn't marketing singles for sale; he was marketing views on YouTube.