Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy To Have Different Versions Of Cover Art?
GUNS N’ ROSES’ CHINESE DEMOCRACY TO HAVE DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF COVER ARTWORK?:
October 16, 2008
After a 17-year-wait for a new Guns N’ Roses album, you’d be forgiven for thinking Chinese Democracy was a myth. Well, a new pre-order page on BestBuy points to the contrary, and reveals plans for three different versions of album artwork. It’s coming…
BestBuy’s ‘exclusive offer’ page lists three CD and three vinyl copies, marked Cover A and Cover B. The US retail chain appears to be the first site anywhere to publish the artwork for the ludicrously long-awaited new Guns N’ Roses album.
BestBuy has also published a tracklisting for the album, which runs as follows:
01. Chinese Democracy
02. Scraped
03. Shackler’s Revenge
04. Street Of Dreams
05. If The World
06. Better
07. This I Love
08. There Was A Time
09. Riad N’ The Bedovins
10. Sorry
11. I.R.S.
12. Catcher
13. Madagascar
14. Prostitute
In other Chinese Democracy news, Marketing Week reports that Guns N’ Roses is seeking an advertising agency to promote their long-awaited next album in a major break from music industry tradition.
Sources suggest that Universal Music has already contacted several London advertising hotshops to launch a marketing communications programme ahead of the global release of “Chinese Democracy” on November 25.
The move is the latest in a string of new initiatives by the music industry to encourage people to continue buying music, particularly albums, rather than illegally downloading or just buying singles for 79p.
Last summer, Prince gave away free copies of his new album with The Mail on Sunday; and Radiohead launched its own pay-what-you-like download experiment for their latest album.
Declining sales of music have prompted many bands, including Coldplay, to give away their tracks free. Last month Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher said he would “embrace” the growing free music culture by allowing fans to listen to the band’s new album on MySpace, ahead of its official release. The album was posted on the social networking site so that fans could listen free.
It will be the first Guns N’ Roses album since “The Spaghetti Incident” in 1993 and was initially scheduled for release in March last year.
The delay prompted Dr Pepper in the US to announce that it will give a free can of its soft drink to “everyone in America” if the album is released anytime during 2008.
If a “hotshot” agency does bag the contract, it may well mark another move away from the music industry’s traditional promotion-method. We’d love to see the rock behemoths ‘doing a Radiohead’ or giving away some stem files for a remix competition, but it seems unlikely. Fans have been waiting 17 years: they’ll buy it, and the other five versions, in droves…
Courtesy of www.musicradar.com