Where S The Critical Information

listed on the stock exchange. HMV has partnered with digitalone. Fudge Music have built

themselves a store. Chaos has decided to acquire Gaslight Music.

But it seems that all of them have completely forgotten to include critical

information in their music listings.

Pick up a music CD (or look at your MP3 playlist for an even better example). There's

probably a title, an artist name, and some gruesome pictures (no wait, that might just

be my CD collection)... Now, flip it over, and more often than not, you'll find a

listing of the tracks to be found on the CD. Sometimes they'll also tell you how long

each track is.

However, if you're purchasing music online in Australia, consider yourself lucky to

find any track information. This isn't a problem if you're looking to pick up a copy of

Master of Puppets (Metallica) that you know back to front, and have had your eyes on

for years, but if you simply want to check if their new release S&M includes a

particular track - well, good luck.

Editor of Newswire, Angus Kidman writes in a

recent article - Not enough

information - that his purchasing is done at

href="http://www.cdnow.com/" target="_new">CDnow almost entirely due to the fact that he cannot

find track details on the sites of Australian music retailers.

Perhaps if they spent more time building a site packed with useful information, instead

of racing to beat competitors to public offerings...

What do you think? Have you seen similar examples in sites around the planet? Let

everyone know by commenting below.