With falling album sales and the dominance of iTunes, it’s rare that the Billboard charts even register much interest these days. That’s all changed in the last week, with Guns N’ Roses and Kanye West battling it out with Ludacris after all three artists released albums in the same week.

So how did they fare? As expected, West blew away all the competition, selling 450,000 copies of 808 & Heartbreak and entering the Billboard 200 in the No. 1 slot. Guns N’ Roses didn’t even make it to No. 2, after being beaten out by a resurgent Taylor Swift, whose Fearless album continues to sell in vast quantities. Chinese Democracy ended up shifting 261,000 copies, entering the chart at No. 3.

Billboard makes a comparison between Chinese Democracy and previous first-week sales of Guns N’ Roses albums, offering up a stark contrast with Use Your Illusion I and II. Those albums respectively sold 685,000 and 770,000, back when records actually sold in those kind of quantities (1991). Ludacris’ Theater of the Mind ended up entering at No. 5, with sales of 213,000. It marks the end of a bad week for Axl Rose, who is facing allegations that his own lack of promotion for Chinese Democracy has partly caused its downfall. [Billboard]