To The ENTIRE World....

[w 23 axl]

Dear World....and anyone else alive out there,


Stop Judging Chinese Democracy By Its Sales!!!!
- First of all, everyone downloads. Its not 1991 anymore. People are lazy and rather sit at their desk and get the album instantly and for free. Besides, the album was released on Myspace for free, where it got CRAZY downloads. Most of those people already got their fill, or just downloaded for free.
- Beyond that major factor, the nature of CD meant that people had these songs ALREADY and for years. Most of the album came out in leaks, which meant, if you just downloaded a couple of new one's, you already have the cd. (in their minds, of course, but they miss the final mixes and additions)
- the economy is almost beyond repair. yes, britney or acdc sell, but acdc's crowd aren't downloading as much, and those songs were NEW to them, wasnt on myspace etc. etc. we all had CD and so did everyone else back in 2006. Some we didn;t have till 2008, but I know I had all the songs by October 2008, the final 2 being TIL and SCRAPED.


Everyone needs to stop judging this album by sales. It has, literally, EVERYTHING working against it, and nothing working for it. Bad marketing plan, bad plan overall, bad everything. myspace deceison, all the leaks, all the misfires through the yrs. etc. ...so, in closing, the #'s mean nothing regarding this album. its a special case.

[sharky-dude]

agree 100%. theres thousands of ppl downloading the torrent every second of every day, in addition to what you mentioned

[w 23 axl]

of course....you cannot judge albums by sales anymore.

albums maybe need to be looked at by judging the tour attached to them. you can never replace the live show. you can, however, save the $ and gas and just download for free nowadays.

If this album came out in 1999 it instantly sells way more b/c less people had high-speed, broadband connections.

Britney sells b/c gay men and teenager girls buy it to look at her pics and show their friends. ACDC fans dont download as much and lucky for them, a NEW album meant a NEW album. Taylor Swift, all this other BS...you cannot compare Axl and GNR in this scenario. Besides, all of those artists are not selling like the old days. Id say today, going GOLD is the new PLATINUM.

[reddragon53545]

you are right about the sales part .. but  i don't know if I can accept the whole "bad marketing , bad plan" part any more .. Axl could have easily changed that and done some interviews, self promoted a bit .. better yet  show his face, released concert footage.. made apperences
  yes the marketing campain as a whole was poor and rushed.. I dont' think that justifies sabotaging the album by letting it wither on the vine..  sure Best Buy didn't give enough .. But GNR gave nothing in terms of promotion

  it just seems that the band itself isn't supporting this record .. and it is getting harder to stand behind it   when the sales figures are low and it is  becoming a "nonevent" "commercial failure"  no matter what factors   you account, by the rest of the world .   
 I want to scream at people how much I love the record and they should go out and buy it  but when the people that made it  seem to not care .. how can we

[axlrose4eva]

OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! whooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 


....whoa... wrong thread.... 

[reddragon53545]

do you really love morrisey ?

[axlrose4eva]

do you really love morrisey ?

with all my virtual heart

[summerharvest]

you are all delusional...

[Gunns]

says the person with an avatar like that

[Gagarin]

1.) Yes, downloads and digital media have made sales a little soft. Since there's not just ONE WAY to get music, people can get their music fix from different sources. Media and entertainment overall has been more diversifed. Take a person from 1991 who buys lots of records every year, and transplant them to 2009, and they may become Internet addicts or Netflix junkies instead. But successful records today, here and now, - either through merit or marketing - still sell millions of copies.

2.) However, only a few thousand would-be buyers of GNR downloaded the demos. That still leaves a few million people left that we thought would be interested enough to pick up the album, who in the end, still haven't done so.

3.) Again - the amount of people who downloaded GNR demos and didn't buy Chinese Democracy is abysmally tiny compared to the GIANT effect Wal-Mart's marketing and product support had on AC/DC's sales. Wal-Mart pushed AC/DC down people's mouths and made buyers out of people. It had nothing to do with AC/DC's customers not being downloaders of music, or that the music wasn't leaked to a small Internet niche.  There were a number of dropped balls with the way this record was supported by Best Buy and UMG.


I'm not judging the album, but the album has underperformed so far ---actually, the sales have, and the record company and Best Buy didn't deliver.


But you can't simplistically say "it's teh Internetz!" because your perspective is way skewed. Most people don't care to download leaks or search for demos, and most people never heard of AntiQuiet, MSL, or listen to music on MySpace.

[Axlcrazy]

1.) Yes, downloads and digital media have made sales a little soft. Since there's not just ONE WAY to get music, people can get their music fix from different sources. Media and entertainment overall has been more diversifed. Take a person from 1991 who buys lots of records every year, and transplant them to 2009, and they may become Internet addicts or Netflix junkies instead. But successful records today, here and now, - either through merit or marketing - still sell millions of copies.

2.) However, only a few thousand would-be buyers of GNR downloaded the demos. That still leaves a few million people left that we thought would be interested enough to pick up the album, who in the end, still haven't done so.

3.) Again - the amount of people who downloaded GNR demos and didn't buy Chinese Democracy is abysmally tiny compared to the GIANT effect Wal-Mart's marketing and product support had on AC/DC's sales. Wal-Mart pushed AC/DC down people's mouths and made buyers out of people. It had nothing to do with AC/DC's customers not being downloaders of music, or that the music wasn't leaked to a small Internet niche.  There were a number of dropped balls with the way this record was supported by Best Buy and UMG.


I'm not judging the album, but the album has underperformed so far ---actually, the sales have, and the record company and Best Buy didn't deliver.


But you can't simplistically say "it's teh Internetz!" because your perspective is way skewed. Most people don't care to download leaks or search for demos, and most people never heard of AntiQuiet, MSL, or listen to music on MySpace.

you are right about the sales part .. but  i don't know if I can accept the whole "bad marketing , bad plan" part any more .. Axl could have easily changed that and done some interviews, self promoted a bit .. better yet  show his face, released concert footage.. made apperences
  yes the marketing campain as a whole was poor and rushed.. I dont' think that justifies sabotaging the album by letting it wither on the vine..  sure Best Buy didn't give enough .. But GNR gave nothing in terms of promotion

  it just seems that the band itself isn't supporting this record .. and it is getting harder to stand behind it   when the sales figures are low and it is  becoming a "nonevent" "commercial failure"  no matter what factors   you account, by the rest of the world .  
 I want to scream at people how much I love the record and they should go out and buy it  but when the people that made it  seem to not care .. how can we

This is the truth. We are not judging the quality of the album by it's sales! We are just simply disappointed that GNR missed probably their last opportunity to rule the world again. It's also disappointing that after waiting all this time for CD, the band has completely disappeared off the face of the earth.

[Gez]

Kinda selling this tot he wrong crowd mate, the majority of us here love the album. Go post that on some other website like jabbermouth or whatever it's called, they are generally retards who are easily influenced.

[Guns N Axl]

 

[Guns N Axl]

  :'(

[RP88]

It's getting kind of depressing when every other thread on the news page is about album sales.

I would really like to see some actual news...

[ryanf]

I could give a shit about albums sales, what the rest of the world thinks etc...I think the album is awesome and has been in my car playing since 11/23/08

[w 23 axl]

1.) Yes, downloads and digital media have made sales a little soft. Since there's not just ONE WAY to get music, people can get their music fix from different sources. Media and entertainment overall has been more diversifed. Take a person from 1991 who buys lots of records every year, and transplant them to 2009, and they may become Internet addicts or Netflix junkies instead. But successful records today, here and now, - either through merit or marketing - still sell millions of copies.

2.) However, only a few thousand would-be buyers of GNR downloaded the demos. That still leaves a few million people left that we thought would be interested enough to pick up the album, who in the end, still haven't done so.

3.) Again - the amount of people who downloaded GNR demos and didn't buy Chinese Democracy is abysmally tiny compared to the GIANT effect Wal-Mart's marketing and product support had on AC/DC's sales. Wal-Mart pushed AC/DC down people's mouths and made buyers out of people. It had nothing to do with AC/DC's customers not being downloaders of music, or that the music wasn't leaked to a small Internet niche.  There were a number of dropped balls with the way this record was supported by Best Buy and UMG.


I'm not judging the album, but the album has underperformed so far ---actually, the sales have, and the record company and Best Buy didn't deliver.


But you can't simplistically say "it's teh Internetz!" because your perspective is way skewed. Most people don't care to download leaks or search for demos, and most people never heard of AntiQuiet, MSL, or listen to music on MySpace.

now you make some good points, i will admit, but, the last comment is off. people dont listen to music on myspace?!?!? the songs were being played a million times a day. thats not us hitting refresh!! i work with teenagers, they all listened to the album on myspace the week of the release, none of them bought the album b/c they "already had it".

[w 23 axl]

Kinda selling this tot he wrong crowd mate, the majority of us here love the album. Go post that on some other website like jabbermouth or whatever it's called, they are generally retards who are easily influenced.

what?? you MUST be from england.

[Tronx]

you can say whatever shit comes to your mind, but the fact is very clear, do to poor promotion, by Axl and others this shit is not a band, it never was anyway. Look , we are in almost pass january and we dont have a fucking video, or a fucking clue about this band, whos in, out, in the middle. So stop hiding the sun with your thumb. Yeah yeah yeah is not 1991 , but you know what PEOPLE STILL BUY CDS, otherwise we woundt have Virgin Stores everyware, or others stores. This baby was dead before was borned, period.

[w 23 axl]

you can say whatever shit comes to your mind, but the fact is very clear, do to poor promotion, by Axl and others this shit is not a band, it never was anyway. Look , we are in almost pass january and we dont have a fucking video, or a fucking clue about this band, whos in, out, in the middle. So stop hiding the sun with your thumb. Yeah yeah yeah is not 1991 , but you know what PEOPLE STILL BUY CDS, otherwise we woundt have Virgin Stores everyware, or others stores. This baby was dead before was borned, period.

Wow. Hhhmmmm. Well, I cant really argue with anything you just said. Not one part.

[2NaFish]

PEOPLE STILL BUY CDS, otherwise we woundt have Virgin Stores everyware, or others stores.

would that be virgin that became zavvi? zavvi, hmm? whatever happened to them?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/3933359/Zavvi-administration-threatens-3400-jobs.html

[Gagarin]

now you make some good points, i will admit, but, the last comment is off. people dont listen to music on myspace?!?!? the songs were being played a million times a day. thats not us hitting refresh!! i work with teenagers, they all listened to the album on myspace the week of the release, none of them bought the album b/c they "already had it".

Don't drink the Kool-Aid. YES - lots of people listened to it. But what does "millions of times" a day mean?

The first 24 hour period they reported 3 million listens to the tracks.

But how many individual people were behind that?

3 million listens - divided by, what, say 4 tracks per person over the span of a day?

That's 750,000.

And over the course of a day - do they JUST listen to one song once, or do they go back to it later and listen to it again?

750,000 divided by 3 listens to each song - that's 250,000. (about the same size of people who bought the record).

And not to meantion that a song was played automatically when the MySpace page got a hit.

It's kind of crazy that they had that many listens, but again, it in NO WAY impacted first day or week sales the way people think.

The uniques are what matter, not the hits.

[badfaulkner]

Dear World....and anyone else alive out there,


Stop Judging Chinese Democracy By Its Sales!!!!
- First of all, everyone downloads. Its not 1991 anymore. People are lazy and rather sit at their desk and get the album instantly and for free. Besides, the album was released on Myspace for free, where it got CRAZY downloads. Most of those people already got their fill, or just downloaded for free.
- Beyond that major factor, the nature of CD meant that people had these songs ALREADY and for years. Most of the album came out in leaks, which meant, if you just downloaded a couple of new one's, you already have the cd. (in their minds, of course, but they miss the final mixes and additions)
- the economy is almost beyond repair. yes, britney or acdc sell, but acdc's crowd aren't downloading as much, and those songs were NEW to them, wasnt on myspace etc. etc. we all had CD and so did everyone else back in 2006. Some we didn;t have till 2008, but I know I had all the songs by October 2008, the final 2 being TIL and SCRAPED.


Everyone needs to stop judging this album by sales. It has, literally, EVERYTHING working against it, and nothing working for it. Bad marketing plan, bad plan overall, bad everything. myspace deceison, all the leaks, all the misfires through the yrs. etc. ...so, in closing, the #'s mean nothing regarding this album. its a special case.

I'll go further, beyond the downloading reality.

The world's taste SUCKS.  Kanye West being a top seller????? Oh.  My.  God. 

Rap is just awful.  An angry screed of a mumbler set to someone else's music.  Hate the stuff.