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Re: If the Skwerl
You failed to convince me that music piracy isn't real.
I wasn't trying to convince you that its fake. Its obviously a problem. The discussion at hand is about piracy and its effect on Chinese Democracy.
Let's tackle this from a different direction.
When albums are released(leaked), they get tons of activity on the p2p sites. The average seeder activity for a 'big' album is around 2 to 5 thousand seeders, although obviously this will go higher. Most new records that people like will stay on a torrents Top 100 for nearly a year, and in the case of M.I.A., a year and a half but thats because it got a second wind.
Chinese Democracy was in the Top 100 for a couple months, far below the average. Translation: NOBODY wanted to hear it, so it descended from the torrents chart just like it did the real music charts. For the record, every other big record released when CD was is still on those charts.
Downloading is an issue, but you have to look at it from several angles. Nobody is forced to blind buy anything anymore, which I consider a good thing. The days of people buying a shitty Kingdom Come album just to hear 'Get It On' are OVER. They either download the entire record, or more likely buy the track on Itunes.
When Kala was released I gave it to quite a few people. Lets use two examples. I gave it to Rex. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out he didn't buy it. Why? Because he doesn't really like her that much. I also gave it to Madagas. He did like it, and so did one of his kids. He purchased it on Itunes.
See how things balance themselves out? Two people who had never really heard of her got to listen, and one of them supported her by purchasing tracks when they didn't have to.
Like monkeychow said, people obviously aren't as honest as you.
Lets not start acting like I'm Honest Abe here. I'm definitely a downloading motherfucker. The reason I can sorta take a high road is simply because there's not much new music that I like, so I can easily avoid supporting artists after I have a listen.
The first single didn't flop as much as you like to point it out.
No it didn't top the hot 100 chart, or hit it at all in fact. But "rock" songs these days rarely do. Maybe a ballad here and there, but it's filled with pop and r&b songs. So before you point that out, it's a useless argument.
The song charted well on the mainstream rock chart for some time. Without a video, promotion, interviews. It, like the album, was released and left to fight for itself.
That's a good point, but it did suffer a massive descent from the charts no matter how we try and crumble this cookie.
Lets use another M.I.A. example....
When Paper Planes was on the verge of exploding, she asked for fans to buy the track on Itunes. We did(and so did a few people here), and it sent that track to number 2 on the Itunes chart, which played a big role in propelling the Paper Planes craze. Rihanna is the only thing that stopped her from going number one. Love her or hate her, that was a great strategy and her fans were willing to double dip that single to push it up those charts.
Now lets look at the Chinese Democracy single.....
Fans went around yelling "request it on the RADIO!!!!!!!!!!!" over and over until they had numb fingers. One obstacle to that....they themselves weren't requesting it(lets call it the fake street team syndrome), and to make matters worse, the fans didn't even support the single on Itunes and it never charted on the format.
Kinda funny how a grass roots movement takes shape and is successful for a gold selling artist with one small basic forum and a blog but is a complete and total failure for a multi platinum act with tons of fan communities.
It all goes back to the material and not enough people being interested in it. It had strong global first week sales, mainly out of curiosity. Thats it. Game over. Doesn't matter if you think its a great album or a shitty album, that's how the mop flopped.
Another strike against the album was the current line up simply wasn't marketable. 99% of it was created by the 99-01 line ups. How in the fuck does a line up that had no part in that market it to the masses? Answer: They don't, and they didn't.
do you remember 2006 when the better DEMO charted on the radio? axl still had a lot of people backing him up right then and there. but somehow it all went astray.
2006 was "last chance saloon". It still would have suffered the same fate, but sales would have been better simply because they were touring.
"Shackler's Revenge" being played for two minutes before the host cut it off and said "that's enough of that".
Thats funny and sad at the same time.
I see you're laying the groundwork for Slash's solo album.
People download or buy an album, but don't buy the singles they like from it, because they already have them.
That point has been torn apart above.
Re: If the Skwerl
AtariLegend wrote:buzzsaw wrote:LIf people downloaded the album, liked it, but didn't want to buy it, the singles would have done better because those people would have still supported the songs they liked.
Discuss.
I think alot of us can agree "Estranged" is one of our favourite songs, it didn't do too well as a single...
You're right. It was released after the grunge era started. I'm not going to go back and look it up, but unless proven otherwise, I'm going to assume that Estranged did better than either single off of CD. I'm not sure what your point is.
You're assumption is incorrect. Estranged peaked at #16 on the Mainstream Rock chart in 1994 and didn't chart on the hot 100. So it did beat "Better" which peaked at #18 on the Mainstream chart. But "Chinese Democracy" beat it by quite a bit hitting #5 on the Mainstream chart and #34 on the hot 100. In fact just looking at the old band's hits, "Live and Let Die", "Sympathy For The Devil", "Ain't It Fun", "Since I Don't Have You", and "Hair of the Dog" all charted better than "Estranged". So since charting success and sales mean absolutely everything obviously "Estranged" is an inferior song to all of those. Am I following the logic correctly? And if you want to say grunge killed "Estranged", how come it didn't kill the songs off the ultra forgetable Spaghetti Incident.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: If the Skwerl
The fucking lied to us and they fucking blew their chance. The album should have been out in 2006.
The problem IMO was that, i think it was late 06, Axl have a tentative date in 07 ..and said we'd be notifed if anything came up to mess with that....but then I think pretty much a year passed with no updates. I think that's when a lot of people got pissed off.
But i agree with what was being said earlier...the stations and stuff were all lined up for a GNR comeback...but the business side of stuff here droped the ball. GNR didn't play along. No idea why - if it was Axl or if his PR guys just didn't set up stuff right - or what the fuck caused it. But it's a shame cos it's a fucking great album IMO.
- IRISH OS1R1S
- Rep: 59
Re: If the Skwerl
Back on topic: i would'nt like to see the guy get jail time but he did break the law and got caught so its justice that he gets some sort of punishment. Fact is all of us who downloaded songs also broke the law but jail time for this crime is a bit extreme (in my opinion).
Re: If the Skwerl
WOW, Spin for the win
Lets see here Faldor
1.CD had the most hype of any single in recent memory, so it could've been axl humming over a piano and got tons of airplay, so the fact it didn't reach number 1 is really an indictment of how bad a single it really was. Think about this for a second dude. Offspring and papa fucking Roach have number 1 singles but Guns N Fucking Roses hits number 5 and that is suppose to be a big deal?
2. All those songs on TSI were somewhat classic songs already so them getting radio airplay isn't that big of a deal since they are already well known songs.
3. Estranged is damn near 9 minutes long....... SO yeah, that is going to cut into its radio airplay and Estranged isn't a commercial song. 9 minutes, zero chorus.........
Better was crafted to be a hit and it flopped.
Fact is, With no videos, no Axl sightings...... this album was doomed.
Re: If the Skwerl
Better was crafted to be a hit and it flopped.
That track is actually one of the more interesting aspects of the whole saga. From the nanosecond it leaked, everyone(its lovers and haters) knew the album was gonna sink or swim on the back of that one song.
After the single tanked(and the video never materialized), GNR went back into 2003-05 mode.
Coincidence?
I think not.
Re: If the Skwerl
WOW, Spin for the win
Lets see here Faldor
1.CD had the most hype of any single in recent memory, so it could've been axl humming over a piano and got tons of airplay, so the fact it didn't reach number 1 is really an indictment of how bad a single it really was. Think about this for a second dude. Offspring and papa fucking Roach have number 1 singles but Guns N Fucking Roses hits number 5 and that is suppose to be a big deal?
2. All those songs on TSI were somewhat classic songs already so them getting radio airplay isn't that big of a deal since they are already well known songs.
3. Estranged is damn near 9 minutes long....... SO yeah, that is going to cut into its radio airplay and Estranged isn't a commercial song. 9 minutes, zero chorus.........
Better was crafted to be a hit and it flopped.
Fact is, With no videos, no Axl sightings...... this album was doomed.
There are a lot of other reasons too. GnR was primed for a huge comeback and after one week, it sank. He knows I wasn't referring to individual songs, I was more referring to the album as a whole. If an album has good songs and the people have access to it, it will sell. It really is that simple. Estranged is better than any song on CD with the possible exception of TWAT - he knows this as well. He's trying to take the most extreme example to make his case (ignoring the circumstances surrounding it) and that never works.
He's grasping for ways to make my case look weak, but all he's doing is making it stronger.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: If the Skwerl
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After the single tanked(and the video never materialized), GNR went back into 2003-05 mode.Coincidence?
I think not.
Interesting...i hadn't thought of it like that...although IMO...promo was already late at that stage...wasn't CD first? I would have liked GNR to be in full publicity mode at that stage....
Re: If the Skwerl
Let's not forget Axl was easing up to releasing it in 1999, and when everyone went "ewww" when they heard Oh My God.
Suddenly he went dark again. I've actually been shocked how communicative Axl's been in the last few months, riding solely on the internet posts (which was PR), because like has been mentioned above, and before - it's 2005 all over again.
