I stopped by the Best Buy on Broadway in downtown Manhattan today and was greeted by the sign at left, which led me to believe that
Chinese Democracy's release would have been a big deal, at least in terms of in-store displays and the like. But as it turned out, "music's most anticipated album ever" wasn't worth a display on the store's first floor, let alone one somewhere adjacent to the
Rock Band 2 setup on floor two. Instead, once I got to the store's music section (which is probably worthy of its own "how low can its floor space go" post at some point), I saw a big display of iPod acessories blocking the poster advertising the album, and scant inventory of the record itself. (I did get to play "Man In The Box" and "Eye Of The Tiger" on
Rock Band, which was pretty fun; the store was overall surprisingly empty, and I probably could have squeezed another two songs or so in.) What was the scene like in other parts of the country? Some reports from the front after the jump.
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Idolator
While flipping through the Best Buy circular that came with this weekend's New York Times, I noticed something kind of odd: There wasn't one mention of Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy anywhere within, despite the album still being exclusively available at the big blue retailer. All the premium music-selling real estate—the album-cover shots in proffered iPods, etc.—was instead given over mostly to Britney Spears' Circus, which I can understand on one level (a pretty girl being like a melody and all), but which doesn't make sense given that the Guns deal was supposedly a big-money transaction for Best Buy, and that the endlessly speculated-about album reportedly didn't break the half-million mark as far as its first-week sales went.
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