Predictive polls, please tell us something we don't already know

Every year more than 200 industry folk are charged with coming up a list of the top new names for the following year for the BBC's "Sound Of " poll.

The poll has an enviable reputation in that it has always been more or less on the money with its predictions - particularly last year, when Mika took the No 1 slot.

In years past, Sound Of threw up some surprising names, acts you had never heard of or didn't sound that good on paper, but went on to do the business anyway. This was the case with Kaiser Chiefs, unknowns who were described as "Britpop revivalists" with all the connotations of them being a retro act who bashed out pub rock.

True to form, the Chiefs justified their placing, and the poll has now become so accurate that a good 60 to 70 per cent of the top 10 selected each year will go on to make an impression.

This used to mean something in the days before MySpace and MP3 blogging sites. Now, though, the poll comes across as predictable. This year's top 10 will barely cause a flicker of interest, given that most of the acts in question already have a substantial media profile.

At No 1 this year is Adele, followed by Duffy. Both of these acts are remarkable talents who will make a substantial dent in the charts when their debut albums are released. But both have received plenty of coverage over the past few months, have big record deals, and really don't need the kind of exposure that the Sound Of poll can provide. Nor could the other bands named in the poll - The Ting Tings, Glasvegas, Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, Santogold - be described as starved of publicity.

The odd thing about this year's Sound Of is how it had its magic carpet pulled out from under it last month, and from an unlikely source.

The Brit Awards, which are held every February, have long and rightfully been criticised for rewarding banal mainstream acts only. But, in a fit of grooviness, and ever mindful of how much the industry needs big-selling new talent at the moment, the Brits launched a new award this year called The Critics' Choice.

The idea is to assemble a panel of insiders very similar to those who vote in the BBC poll to anoint the next big breakthrough act. Eligibility criteria are strict: only acts who are signed to a label and have debut albums planned for release shortly can be short- listed. Which rather undermines its mission statement of being a "discovery" award.

The Critics' Choice award was always going to go to Adele. The problem for The Brits was that if they held off giving the award to her at the ceremony in February, it would be long after she had won the BBC poll and presumably a good month after her debut album had hit the top of the charts. Giving a "newcomer" award to someone with a No 1 album didn't make much sense, so the Brits announced Adele as their winner last month.

Adele has found herself in the middle of an unseemingly music biz scramble. She is now in the position of already being a Brit Award winner without an album in the shops. It is desperately unfair on the singer, not least because it takes away the surprise factor of how good she really is and leaves people who buy her album in the position of feeling they've been force-fed her rather than allowed to discover her by themselves.

There is one simple solution to all this "new act award" nonsense: tighten up the eligibility rules. If only bands with no record deal, no publishing deal and no manage- ment deal were eligible for

both the Sound Of poll and the Critics' Choice award, we might feel we were being pointed in some new, interesting directions, rather than just being asked to endorse the consensus.