Disclaimer: The following blog post contains some language that may be offensive to some readers. Because our software does not filter profanity… and this case study is on Guns N’ Roses… a few four-letter words are part of the research.
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When Guns N’ Roses began working on their latest album, Chinese Democracy, I was 10 years old.
It was also the year that Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered, Tony Blair became Prime Minister of Great Britain and the Buffalo Bills were in the Super Bowl (whaa?)
It was 1994.
Their fans have been waiting over half of my life for this CD, so it seemed like an obvious choice for a case study. The hardest-rocking-turned-up-to-11 case study ever. I wanted to see what fans were actually saying about an album that was practically an urban myth until Nov. 23, 2008.
I’m also going to try and use as many bad GNR puns as possible… so have a little paaayyyshunce… yeaaaah (cue whistling). That’s one.
Keep in mind that this case study is a sampling of information. I pulled in 137 Nodes (separate Web pages) mentioning Chinese Democracy using a few different queries. While not scientific, I feel it’s an accurate representation of what’s out there.
Live and Let Pie
To the right is our Relative Insight Scenario Spread chart. It breaks down the types of Nodes in the Ecosystem into categories. In this case, a wide variety of categories are represented with various percentages.
Everyone is talking about Chinese Democracy. From legit news organizations and music magazines to random forums, blogs and social networks.
If Axl wanted plenty of attention for waiting Dakota Fanning’s lifespan to release this project - he got it.
The two largest categories - Reviews and Social Networks - contain the bulk of the sentiment, or positive or negative reactions to the album (we’ll get to that in a minute). Nodes in these categories represent sites like Twitter, MySpace, personal blog reviews and professional critics.
P.S. Live and Let Pie! Get it? Like Live and Let Die but it’s a pie chart! No? Mmmk…
Tagxl Rose
The Semantic Cloud lets you see the language that people are using to talk about your company or product. The cloud consists of the most popular words found on the Nodes in an Ecosystem.
The most frequently used words have largest font. It’s basically a giant tag cloud (hence Tagxl Rose - props to my friend Ryan for coming up with that one.)
Our software does not censor or filter out profanity. Though it can be offensive, it can also be valuable - especially when you’re talking rock. Judging by this cloud, there are some pretty strong feelings about Chinese Democracy.
It’s worth noting that former GNR guitarists Slash (1985-1996) and Buckethead (2000-2004) are mentioned on 61 of the 137 Nodes. What’s interesting to me is that Slash is mentioned more frequently than Buckethead, yet he doesn’t play on the album.
Where the Nodes are green and the girls are pretty
What is a rock album without reviews? That’s where Spark could be invaluable to recording artists.
Spark brought back relevant reviews from professional critics, but also from personal blogs, forum comments and Twitter “reviews.”
While Chinese Democracy had a reputation for being a monumental disappointment, the Nodes that Spark found showed an equal number of people either really loved or really hated the album. Maybe the positive reviews weren’t reaching the right people?
I have to admit some of the negative reviews were creative. One of my favorites:
The idea that “Chinese Democracy” had actually been released was like finding a unicorn in the middle of the woods. But upon closer inspection, the unicorn was nothing more then a donkey with a pine cone atop its head.
Another fav:
This is the mythical burrito microwaved by God that’s so hot, God Himself cannot eat it.
Virtualization
Finally, take a look at how the Chinese Democracy Ecosystem grows in Spark’s Virtualization engine. This is a 3D, interactive map of the Ecosystem. Here are a few guidelines:
- Each dot represents a single Node in the Ecosystem.
- Red and green dots are negative and positive sentiment, respectively.
- Lines connecting the Nodes are pages that link to each other. Most of the connections you see are to the GNR MySpace and fan pages.
Chinese Democracy was easily one of the most anticipated rock albums ever, but judging by this data, GNR didn’t take advantage of social media to expand their fan base. After all, teens with buying power weren’t even born when they released their last album.
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