"There IS NO FINAL COPY OF CHINESE DEMOCRACY. Several CDs of material were turned into the label, and are now out of Axl's hands. Read what you will into that, but the album has not hit the presses. If it had, we'd all have the entire thing by now.

The hysterical conviction of people who have no fucking clue what they're talking about it astonishing, and reminds me why religion is so poisonous, but the masses willing to follow them with eyes clenched tight are just pitifully funny.

Kids, love it or hate it, these are the finished songs. No matter what anybody tries to spin otherwise, whatever smug "insider" is gonna laugh and say I'm part of some GNR misinformation machine, the simple fact is that we leaked the songs, we know where they came from, and that enables me to say with unwavering certainty that these are 9 of many, many finished new GNR songs to come.
I may be "some guy" to the rest of you, but I'm here to set the record straight, and that's what I've been doing. You people are the hardest-core GNR fans there are, and I don't take that shit lightly. But despite the fact that I have a professional journalistic reputation of ironclad honesty, I know I can't convince the people who have gotten used to a steady diet of horsheshit to swallow what I say with no questions asked. So I guess you'll have to wait and see. " Johnny Firecloud

Now, 1. Axl has confirmed that Gnr is still signed with Universal.
        2. We know the album was not mastered until October of this year.
        3. The Best Buy deal happened very fast and allegedly Axl and the record company got a very nice payday out of it.
        4. Axl clearly said he is not happy with a bunch of things and there is an indication from some industry insiders that the final release of the album and the final mastered product was not approved by Axl.
       5. It is not coincidental that the album contains all the leaked studio songs. In other words, the record company had more control over the tracklist and wanted to dump all leaked studio songs. The Best Buy deal came quick, the album booklet was slapped together quick. Axl not happy. Is this the Best Buy version of the album? Hmmm.

* my whole point is that I think Axl has washed his hands with all of this and turned ALL the material over to Uni. Uni now has the power to release what they want, when they want. Since people like Coldplay are reissuing albums fairly quickly, Axl may be able to get more of his version out there. But, ultimately, all the material being in the hands of the record company is a good thing for the fans.  I have more to say, but this is a start.