Guns N' Roses out of ammo?

According to industry website Hits Daily Double, the new Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, looks likely to sell a total of around 56,000 copies in its second week of release, causing it to fall out of the Billboard album chart's Top 10. If that number proves accurate, the album will experience a 78 percent drop from its first week sales of 261,000 -- an unheard-of decline even in these dying days of the CD industry. Full sales figures will be released on Wednesday (December 10th).

Analysts have already begun going over what happened to Chinese Democracy, which arrived on November 23rd as a Best Buy exclusive after a wait of more than 15 years. The most immediate comparison has been to AC/DC's new Black Ice, which also came out through a single retailer, in this case Wal-Mart, and sold nearly 800,000 copies in its first week after an eight-year gap between albums.

But AC/DC did interviews, online initiatives and TV appearances to promote their album, also launching a major North American tour days after its arrival. Guns N' Roses has not scheduled any live dates, and frontman Axl Rose -- the band's sole remaining original member -- has not done a single interview or made any appearances to help with his record's marketing or even justify using the Guns N' Roses brand for what sounds more like a Rose solo outing.

Some have also suggested that Best Buy was far less experienced at this sort of release, while Wal-Mart pioneered it with albums from the Eagles and Garth Brooks. The retailer paid $14 million for 1.6 million copies of the Guns N' Roses album, according to Hits.