I'll have to grab this. I missed out on it last time.

The sad thing is that I have become one of the leechers. I used to be a major buyer of cds, and have literally mountains of cds in my house. The majority of them in boxes filling the closet of one of my spare bedrooms. I got into downloading the past couple years because there wasn't much new stuff that interested me, and what did, I would just download a variety of songs from those artists. I have been getting into more rap, electronica, euro pop, and R & B lately, and have not bought any albums from those artists. Stuff like Christina Milan, Rhianna, New Young Pony Club, Peaches, etc. That has not translated into album purchases.

When I am a hardcore fan of an artist who has released an album, such as M.I.A. or BH, I will buy the album to show support. In the case of BH he releases too much material for people to buy, and he actually encourages downloading by doing that.

Now that I am in the habit of downloading, its hard to get out of it. Its like a drug.

I'm not into pirating movies though. I like seeing films in the theater, and as far as home watching goes, I have a subscription to Netflix and I watch films through their service. Last movie I downloaded was Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning many months ago, and since I had already paid to see it in theaters before downloading the bootleg copy, I didn't consider it piracy.

I might have to download some of those tracks.

I think Hollywood has learned a lesson from the Lohan fiasco. Just because some kids get their first hard on over some airhead actress and some bloggers post about hating her, it does not mean that actress deserves huge salaries and starring roles.

She was never as popular as the media tried to claim she was. Awhile back I posted at another site the statistics that some media company released about various worldwide magazines. When Lohan or Hilton were on the cover of any magazine, sales dropped around 40%. No increase. A massive drop. That would certainly explain why Maxim did not put her on their cover of the last Hot 100 issue even though they gave her the number one spot on their Hot List. They didn't want a huge drop in sales.

I've been saying it for ages, but I seriously think the attention whore era that people like Hilton, Lohan,etc. started is coming to an end. The studios are tired of losing money on these people. If they want to risk money, they know they can take a chance on new talent.

There's no doubt anymore that it wont outsell Contraband. Downloading wasn't as out of control when CB was released. I dont remember the exact sales figures(not much of a VR fan), but didn't CB sell around 3 million copies? No way in hell will CD even come close to that. Thats nothing against GNR by saying that. Its reality. A band of men approaching fifty who haven't released anything is not going multi platinum. Even the name doesn't guarantee huge sales anymore. The name only guarantees a few articles in the media.

I would love to be proven wrong and CD somehow take off when its released, but I seriously don't see the record venturing any further than gold territory. With the right single it might hit platinum.