This post is part of our feature on Money Losers of 2008. See all 20.

For decades, Axl Rose, the lead singer for Guns N' Roses, has shown nothing but contempt for his fans, his fellow musicians, the public. and women. He would cancel concerts for no apparent reason. In 1991, he walked off the stage during a show in Germany.

Rose, born William Bruce Rose, is not a stupid man. He knew that the public still clamored for Guns N' Roses. Its songs were mainstays of rock radio. People continued to buy the group's DVDs. So, Rose went to work on the band's sixth album called Chinese Democracy.

And work. And work.

Chinese Democracy attracted almost legendary status as a project that languished for about 15 years. That's almost three lifetimes in the music industry.

Some critics liked the Rose's creation that was recently released. Rolling Stone called Chinese Democracy a "great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record." Fans were not as enthused.

Guns n' Roses long-awaited "Chinese Democracy" album has been a flop, sticking Best Buy (NASDAQ: BBY) with hundreds of thousands of unsold copies that "seem destined for the bargain bin", according (subscription required) to the Wall Street Journal.

In the first two weeks, the CD has sold 318,000 copies. Problem: Best Buy bought 1.3 million copies up-front.

But with 1.3 million copies sold up-front to the exclusive retailer, Axl Rose may not have seen a need to go and promote the album aggressively. He reportedly declined interviews with Rolling Stone and The New York Times. Best Buy agreed not to return any CDs, so Interscope is off the hook as well.

An insider at Interscope, the band's label told The Sun that he thinks the album would have done much better if Rose was prepared to do some promotion, especially since he worked 15 years on the album.

Billboard announced last week that Best Buy Stores, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) is rumored to be the exclusive retailer for the continuously pending Guns n' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, by the end of 2008. For anyone who does not know about this album, it is likely to be one of the longest produced and most expensive in the history of the music business; it went into production in the mid-1990s.

Helping to fuel this rumor is the band's new management, Irving Azoff's Front Line Management, which has a history of releasing new albums exclusively through single retailers. Front Line released the Eagles return album Long Road Out of Eden through Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) a year ago with massive success. The "new" Guns n' Roses album would predictably see similar success when and if it is ever released, and Best Buy is smart to be grasping at the exclusivity if it is more than a rumor.

But will the album's release recoup the amount of money spent producing it? This is one of the major reasons the album is continuously unreleased, despite rumors of release dates and its appearances on release schedules. A March 2005 article by the New York Times stated that production costs had reached $13 million, a figure that could only have increased in the following three and a half years. These high figures raise the question of whether the album will truly be worth release financially, even if it is critically or popularly successful.