I might have to download some of those tracks.

I think Hollywood has learned a lesson from the Lohan fiasco. Just because some kids get their first hard on over some airhead actress and some bloggers post about hating her, it does not mean that actress deserves huge salaries and starring roles.

She was never as popular as the media tried to claim she was. Awhile back I posted at another site the statistics that some media company released about various worldwide magazines. When Lohan or Hilton were on the cover of any magazine, sales dropped around 40%. No increase. A massive drop. That would certainly explain why Maxim did not put her on their cover of the last Hot 100 issue even though they gave her the number one spot on their Hot List. They didn't want a huge drop in sales.

I've been saying it for ages, but I seriously think the attention whore era that people like Hilton, Lohan,etc. started is coming to an end. The studios are tired of losing money on these people. If they want to risk money, they know they can take a chance on new talent.

There's no doubt anymore that it wont outsell Contraband. Downloading wasn't as out of control when CB was released. I dont remember the exact sales figures(not much of a VR fan), but didn't CB sell around 3 million copies? No way in hell will CD even come close to that. Thats nothing against GNR by saying that. Its reality. A band of men approaching fifty who haven't released anything is not going multi platinum. Even the name doesn't guarantee huge sales anymore. The name only guarantees a few articles in the media.

I would love to be proven wrong and CD somehow take off when its released, but I seriously don't see the record venturing any further than gold territory. With the right single it might hit platinum.

There's going to be a LOT of "wheezing balloons" this decade. The music era we live in is unprecedented. There's a ton of bands in different genres all fighting for the small pie known as people who buy music. Without album sales able to gauge the interest in artists, and the huge tours becoming extinct, everything is upside down. You have huge bands like VR having low sales and little media interest, and artists like MIA getting tons of media attention yet very little record sales. Top sellers are Disney fads and other flavor of the month shit selling a max of 2 or 3 million copies. In 2007 and beyond, you can enter the Billboard top 20 by selling 10,000 copies. Thats insane. At that rate, no band can ever become dominant because they are always being pushed down the totem pole by the next artist to sell ten thousand albums. Its bizarre.

The days of Joe Public walking into a record store and buying several cds are long gone. You are lucky if you can even pay Joe Public to go within a mile of a record store, and if he does, he'll buy one album and its likely something he liked in his youth.

Also, the days of people sitting around talking about the hot new band are over as well. There's too many bands out there for a specific band/artist to gain a real buzz.

The industry is in chaos.