$1.69 each.
Australia.
End of story.
Ok. Not really. Name an artist on EMI? Robbie Williams. OK... Coldplay? Yep. Um... Radiohead? Queen! Pink Floyd. Moby. Crowded House. OK, whatever. A quick play with the horrific "Browse" function shows you how many artists they have up, but there seems to be no direction. Much as I hate genres, they'd really help here. It's very very overwhelming.
And check out Robbie William's page. Why are then SEVEN versions of his Greatest Hits? And multiple versions of almost everything else? They don't seem to have held back though... EVERYTHING is here. All his singles, all the b-sides. All the random weird releases. It's kind of... creepy. Like someone hacked their backend and took everything.
And they have videos.
Look. It's great. EMI, you rock. Really... but I don't want to ever go to a music store knowing a song is released and have to think, "oh, but what, what friggin' label is this on?" Ever. I DON'T CARE. I made a point of going and searching for every band I like right now. None of them were there. None. Wait, I lie, David Bowie is there. With nine copies of his best-ofs.
That's why iTunes works. That's why your store will not... without some kind of indexing middle man and three other major label stores like yours. And all the indies. A scary number of my favourite bands have gone indie in the past few years.
So where is the list of "bands Andrew gives a sh*t about on EMI Australia"? musichead.com.au? Oh look, Sigur Ros. I've heard they're good. $11 for their new album?
One thing I did notice... they have specials. Queen's Greatest Hits II is only $9.99 (typical album price seems to be around $20). Make that $5 and you have a deal... if I didn't already have the CDs...
It's as close to Amazon.MP3 as you can get, with one out of four labels.
Oh yeah, Tea Party! No wait... just their latest... they were Sony before I think. Bah... List of artists signed to EMI [Wikipedia].