Music Ally

Well, there’s a surprise. A newspaper published by the Chinese Communist Party isn’t too keen on the new Guns’n'Roses album, which finally came out today.

In fact, the headline of their not-quite-review is ‘American band releases album venomously attacking China’, with quotes in the piece from unnamed Chinese internet users saying that the album is part of a plot by Westerners “to grasp and control the world using democracy as a pawn”.

No wonder it took so long to make.

Interested in Chinese Democracy and NOT already heard most of it via illegal means? Your luck is in. Guns’n'Roses have debuted their long-awaited new album on MySpace Music, making it available to stream in 25 countries in advance of its 23 November release.

The solo from the title track has been causing excitement in the Music Ally office for some time now, so at least we now get to hear the full thing. The stream is part of a big-budget promotional campaign for the album spanning online and offline – and should be a decent boost for MySpace Music’s already-impressive stream-count.

First impressions from us: the audio is a bit compressed, and there’s a couple of standout howlers early in the album. But there’s also some good widdly solo bits for the Guitar Hero crowd. Nothing on it is as good as Paradise City, but then you know that already.

What do you think? Hear it here.

Can you imagine how great working on the marketing team for Guns’n'Roses must be? Presumably they’ve spent the last 15 years having long lunches, playing office cricket, and developing RSI from playing too many web games. Now, though, they’re getting back to work for the long-awaited Chinese Democracy album.

How? With a nifty YouTube contest, inviting fans to perform their most ridiculous air guitar antics to the new album’s title track and upload the footage to the official G’n'R YouTube channel. The winner gets a listening party for them and 100 mates in their town, as well as a platinum disc.

Entries close on 17th November. The promo video announcing the contest above has some pretty good examples.

Guns’n'Roses are set to release their long, LONG-awaited new album Chinese Democracy this side of Christmas, according to US reports. What’s more, the album will be the latest to be sold through an exclusive distribution deal with a US retailer.

This time, the retailer is Best Buy, which raises the intriguing possibility that its newly-acquired Napster subsidiary may have the digital exclusive on the album too. The news follows the leak earlier this year of nine tracks from the album (and the subsequent arrest of the blogger responsible), as well as a recent tie-up with console game Rock Band 2.

The deal would make G’n'R the latest artist to sign an exclusive retail deal of this type in the US, following The Eagles and AC/DC. However, we’d point you to one sentence in the Billboard story reporting the Chinese Democracy deal: “Some details of the deal are still being worked out, including the release date”. In other words, G’n'R fans should put some other stuff on their Christmas lists too…

Sit down for this news: Guns’n'Roses might actually be preparing to release their “Chinese Democracy” album. No, really, Reports even suggest the band is at the stage of discussing exclusive distribution deals (more…)