CHINESE DEMOCRACY: THE SOUND OF EPIC FAIL
Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 12:02pm by Vince Neilstein
We don’t always agree here at the MS Mansion. Despite what Axl said on Wednesday in his editorial, I would like to go on record as saying that Chinese Democracy — at least in the commercial sense — is an epic fail. By now you’ve all seen the numbers; despite a 9-day sales week (including Black Friday), a big promotional push from one of the nation’s top electronics retailers and the hype generated from a 17-year wait, Guns Axl N’ Roses’ long-awaited Chinese Democracy shifted a mere 261,191 units in its first week of release, enough to land the album at #3 on the Soundscan charts. That’s approximately one-third the number of albums sold first week by the other legacy rock/metal acts who released albums this year, AC/DC and Metallica, who both debuted at #1.
Ouch.
So what exactly went wrong?
First thing’s first: I happen to think it’s a really good album, certainly the best of this year’s legacy act rock releases. But I think that everyone — Axl Rose, his managers, his record label, Best Buy, you, me — expected much higher numbers sales-wise from this record. You don’t manufacture 3 million copies of something (half of which are non-refundable) if you only think you’ll sell a quarter of a million of them in the first week. In the modern record industry the first week is always the biggest and most important, and there’s no reason to think this record will be an anomaly. Outside of Kid Rock, I can’t recall a single rock release all year that’s actually increased sales from week to week by any meaningful amount. Barring an unexpected radio smash, this record is dunzo. It’s not completely out of the question for a sudden revival of public interest… It’s just highly, highly unlikely.
Let’s look at the factors that I believe led to the epic fail of Chinese Democracy:
- An exclusive retail deal. Recent success Walmart has had with The Eagles and AC/DC be damned, I’m not convinced that a retail exclusive was the best way for Axl Rose to go. Being out of the market for so long, the GN’R brand needed a push that made it ubiquitous, made it available EVERYWHERE instead of just one chain of stores, no less a chain that isn’t exactly known as much of a music destination. Axl surely got a nice big check from Best Buy for the exclusive… But that check may have cost him dearly in other ways.
- Best Buy fucked it up. The Chinese Democracy kiosks were small and buried deep inside the stores, obfuscated by other high-priority releases (i.e. The Sopranos) and easily missed by those searching for iPods, flatscreen TVs and other electronics. The promotional push paled in comparison to the campaign surrounding AC/DC’s Black Ice waged by Walmart, who created entire in-store AC/DC “islands” and saturated the marketplace with advertisements on every level of life. Best Buy, on the other hand, didn’t even mention the new GN’R release in their free circulars. And not for nothin’, Best Buy is in the financial shitter right now.
- Lack of press. I’ve spoken about this issue in this space before. What the fuck? Not a word out of Axl in months. When you’re trying to generate hype around a record you have to, you know, do press. A publicist can only do so much without personal appearances.
- Geffen fucked it up. They took a completely old-school radio / “big” press hype (Rolling Stone, NY Times, etc) without doing any grassroots marketing. No blogs, no online promotion, no content directly from the band members, nothing. Axl being gone is one thing (see above), but what of the other members? Or did they just think no one cares about the other members? Methinks they thought Best Buy and radio would do all the dirty work and they could just sit back and watch. Either way: epic fail.
- Axl missed the boat. Despite a 17-year wait, the time and climate were just not right for Axl to release this album. Internet buzz and general hype seemed to reach a fever pitch some time around 2006 / early 2007 — this would have been a GREAT time to release the album. The gossip mill was churning with fresh leaked demos, the band was playing live, things were moving… People were excited and talking about Axl Rose. That ship sailed when Axl failed to capitalize on this hype by continuing to waste more time in the studio.
- It isn’t Guns N’ Roses. Most people know that Axl is the only original member in the band. Despite being one of the most distinctive voices in rock behind some of the biggest anthems of a generation, this “Guns N’ Roses” record seems disingenuous to the casual fan who hasn’t been closely following this 17-year drama.
This album release has provided us with lots of drama. But it’s Axl Rose… why wouldn’t there be drama?
-VN
Excellent analysis, Vince!
Or perhaps, and I’m gonna sound like a dick yet again, nobody actually gives a shit about Axl N’ Roses anymore. Perhaps such an in-depth analysis isn’t necessary because a simpler explanation is readily apparent. You can’t wait 17 years to put out an album and, despite the name recognition, beat heavyweights such as Metallica and AC/FUCKING/DC. There may be some moments (now that I’ve listened to the album more than once) but overall it just isn’t that good. Axl Rose is no Trent Reznor. That being said, I hope Axl Rose comes out of his cave and lets us know that everything is all right and that he was in Australia all along, pretending to be a kangaroo for a month.
And of course the other reason being that Chinese Democracy stinks
I agree on pretty much all points here. How you can spend so many millions of dollars over so many years and just completely fuck it up in the end is somewhat baffling to me.
Another point on BestBuy: BestBuy is not Walmart. Walmart is EVERYWHERE, and, though I don’t have any hard numbers here, I would be willing to bet my left nut the number of customers flowing in and out of Walmart stores throughout the US is exponentially higher than BestBuy. Granted, because of the ridiculous range of products Walmart sells, the average Walmart customer may not be there to purchase music, or anything even remotely musically related, but simply through pure exposure Walmart is going to win this one. Tack on the miserable promotion of the album on BestBuy’s part and you’re pretty much doomed.
whoa whoa whoa…. there is a new guns n’ roses album?
Seems like this whole release was just a way for Axl to get this monster out of his life.
Be careful what you say… Axl might sue ya.
The album has it’s moments,but for the most part it’s a fucking snorefest.
OK now do one for Scott Weiland’s solo album!
I think that while there were probably multiple factors, by far the largest was the Best Buy exclusive. Best Buy fucking sucks. There is a reason it’s financially in the shitter and it’s the same reason that compusa went under; shitty employees shitty products = shitty sales.
A quick addendum, whether or not you thought it was a good album, the fact that Kid Rock has been on the charts for a billion weeks in a row now basically proves that quality has nothing to do with sales.
True enough. The economy is driven by 14 year old suburbanites of all colors who don’t know their dick and/or vagina from their asshole. Then they grow up and buy the new and improved shit flooding our markets for their children, and so on and so forth. But I’ll be fucked if I would rather live anywhere else. Things are too interesting here to move somewhere else.
I think the cd is pretty good, but Axl is way too late. There aren’t as many GN’R fans now and selling in one store is just idiotic if you want to reach the masses.
You know that recent Metalsucks entry about someone stealing your work? Well, um, this commentator has been saying in every one of your GNR posts exactly what your last point said. Of course, 100% of zero is still zero, so my attorney has been called off. ;)
the album is fucking awesome, and that’s all i give a shit about.
I’ve solved both riddles. It didn’t sell because it was terrible. Over-produced, over-written, over-sung and just general melancholy music. With the VERY few pro’s to high amounts of cons, I’m unsurprised. Axl Rose is missing because he knows its terrible.
The past is the past and you can’t recreate it. Times have changed and Axl Rose doesn’t matter anymore. When Headbanger’s Ball debuted the “Welcome to the Jungle” video I was floored. So much so that on the following Sunday morning I walked three miles to Wall to Wall Sound and Video to buy the tape. That album was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. Both for the band that made it and the people that listened to it.
It was also a time when there wasn’t an endless amount of musical genres, or genres within genres. Suburban white kids (at least the ones where I grew up) wouldn’t really start getting into hip-hop for another two or three years and the indie rock scene was for college kids, which is why it was referred to as “college music” back then.
As much as their first album meant to me for a couple of years – that thing stuck around for awhile plus it took another year before it’s initial release to even get noticed by most people once they put out the “Sweet Child O’ Mine” single – the following albums mattered less and less. They got so much fame and fortune so fast that there wasn’t any room to go up vs. Metallica who put out four killer albums before they blew up and then started their descent.
I still hold out hope that I’ll be blown away by something like the first time I heard Appetite, Ride the Lightning or Peace Sells but the thing is it has to be a new band that’ll do it, doing something new. Definitely not something that took 17 years to make.
nailed
It’s an awesome album, so on that score i don’t really care.
As for why it failed. Geffen got the money from the Best Buy deal up front, so there was no real incentive for them to spend money on promotion. In other countries with no exclusivity, they attempted promotion and the album was more succesful (biggest selling album worldwide last week, outselling AC/DC and Metallica in the UK ect).
Was it even a campaign? I’m not sure whether it was arrogance or if none of the parties involved could really be bothered any more. Almost like they said, I suppose we better just squeeze this thing out and flush.
I actually thinks it’s a shame because there’s some good songs on it but even by Axl’s standards, the no show was a step too far into obscurity.
The album moved like 750,000 copies in 2 weeks.
Geffen got $14 million for 1 CD. Axl made 3 for that cost.
The 14 songs he put out are pretty darn good.
So how did this fail again?
You missed out it was a bit sh!t, and we all heard it on myspace and went. Nahhh.
you’re either completely biased, or out of your fucking mind. album rules.
its 1000x better than anything else out nowadays.
Anyone who has listened to the album more than twice and isn’t completely blown away, just doesn’t like rock music or is too biased against AXL to get past it. I for one, have not been able to take it out of my CD player since the day it came out. I would guess I have listened to hit over a hundred times and it gets BETTER every time…simply amazing album that will get it’s due one day, I guarantee it.
One overproduced, overhyped juggernaut of $hit.
I was 8 when appetite came out and was 12 when UYI came out; CD is just a f u c k head of dogshit.