Brandon Flowers, lead singer of band the Killers has expressed his opinion that if the band’s massive hit Mr Brightside had been released today, it would have been a flop.

The front man was speaking out about the cut-throat nature of the music industry and how it would have been completely unforgiving towards the band’s breakthrough hit.

Flowers explained: "Record deals have changed. The radio now only looks at the charts

"They play a song a few times, see how well it's doing on iTunes and if it's not doing well, they'll stop promoting it.

"That would have been a disaster for The Killers. Mr Brightside was released twice. It didn't go down well first time. It wouldn't have the opportunity in the current climate."

Flowers’ observation is an interesting one and highlights a glaring issue within the music industry. Tracks that are promoted well, being played a lot on the radio for example, as a general rule will do better in the charts. This isn’t necessarily true all the time but generally speaking, if a track is played a lot the public are more likely to hear it and be encouraged to buy. This means that radio stations, music channels and anywhere that music is played have a huge influence over what becomes a hit. As musical habits of the media change, so does the music that we choose to listen to.

Turn on any of the big commercial radio stations in this country and you will see that they don’t necessarily play the kind of music that people would listen to if they were choosing by themselves. The track lists of stations such as Heart Radio are purposely musically ambiguous to try and appeal to a wider audience whilst not favouring one cross-section of the music industry. The result is that indie bands such as the Killers often get left off of playlists because they might not appeal to everyone.

A very current example is the Ed Sheeran tracks that commercial radio stations seem to be playing. When Sing, the first song from his new album X was released it was played constantly on my local radio station, as was Thinking Out Loud when it was released. In between those two songs, Don’t was released but was barely ever played. Don’t had more of an edgy sound and also contained some bleeped out, but nevertheless obvious, swearing. This meant that it didn’t fit with radio’s rules and was shelved by DJs.

Going back to the case of Mr Brightside, the has become an Indie anthem since its release and has managed to cross through from obscure side culture to a mainstream classic. I agree with Flowers when he says that if it had been released today, it could have been a very different story.