Eurovision 2015 - 60th Anniversary Edition

No, but as I said... How many physical singles do you actually have to shift in order to top the physical chart? Less than 100, surely?

Well Electro Velvet are still at number 2 in the Physical Sales chart according to this : http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/physical-singles-chart/

However this article from a few years ago confirms how insignificant physical sales now are :
http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2009/jul/15/chart-sales

They mention 2% of total single sales being physical ? (Suspect the numbers are still a bit different for albums. Personally I've never really bought singles on CD, but I always buy albums on CD - as I don't want to buy lower-quality compressed music.)

Winner of the Barbra Dex Award for worst outfit this year went to Netherlands! UK were 3rd.

So, Tumble Tower probably bought 10, DVB Cornwall another 5, and Electro Velvet's mums the rest then.

I prefer buying albums on CD too, but where are you buying your downloaded music from? Virtually every online store has high quality DRM free music, including iTunes (16-bit 256 kbps AAC since the introduction of iTunes Plus which is now the standard quality)

That's still lower quality than CD quality.

I took "lower-quality compressed music" to mean audibly bad sound, like a rubbish MP3 file at low bit rate, not the imperceptible difference to the majority of people between CD quality and an iTunes Store file or, say, a 320kbps MP3.

This is an interesting test:

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

I did some blind testing between Apple Lossless CD rips and AAC 256k compressed versions of the same tracks on decent headphones. I was able to tell the difference enough to mean that I wasn't happy with 256k AAC being my only copy of music I purchased. I'm happy to rip to AAC 256k for use on my phone, but my iPod is Apple Lossless.

That's fine with me (I personally can't tell the difference but don't get angry if other people can), just wanted a clarification on your definition of the phrase.

We're getting side tracked. Back to the topic - the UK's entries are crap.

But, does it really matter? The programme still gets the ratings, plus a large amount of the viewing base thinks the entire contest is a joke, and neither the UK broadcasting or music industries need a Eurovision win to establish themselves and their acts in Europe. We don't need to win, and it's not doing anyone any harm by us not winning.