When I was a bit more fanatic about collecting records of a certain artist who were on EMI (and related labels) I quickly learned about how EMI's labels worked and it all seemed very clear: catalog numbers starting with 5C means The Netherlands, 1A is either The Netherlands or Europe (in the 1980s), 5A and 1C are Germany, 4C is Belgium, 2C France, and so on, like mentioned on this page in the Discogs reference site.
So I thought that it would be trivial to cross reference EMI label numbers and countries in Discogs to see if they would match and clearly see if anyone would have entered the wrong data and then rightfully scold them for it.
But reality turns out to be a bit more complicated than anticipated. What I did is that I looked at all the releases where the catalog number starts with either "5C" or "5c" and checked if the country is The Netherlands. I could find a bit over 6400 releases from the Netherlands:
The much more interesting question is: how many releases are there with EMI catalogue numbers that start with 5C that are actually not from the Netherlands?
As it turns out: quite a few. Some of these are obviously wrong (where the wrong country was picked), but some of them really are from a different country and the catalog number is correct. Good examples are certain releases from Yugoslavia where releases from (mostly) Dutch artists also have the (original) Dutch catalog numbers printed on the releases, such as:
Then there are releases that were made for the Scandinavian markets (which more labels did) that have the 5C catalog numbers, but for example the Scandinavian rights society NCB.
A curious one are the releases from the label Probe. There were quite a few releases from this label that follow the EMI catalog numbering and have the 5C catalog numbers, but where the label says "made in Great Britain". A few examples:
and more. It should be noted that the releases from B.B. King and Tommy Roe listed above actually have a Dutch sleeve that is very typical for early 1970s releases from the Netherlands: bad paper quality and extremely fragile (which makes it very hard to find pristine copies). Also, the design that is used is reminiscent of early 1970s EMI (or related) releases from the Netherlands, which makes it even more confusing.
There are also releases from other labels than Probe that were pressed in the UK, like this release from Deep Purple although the sleeve and rights society (STEMRA) make it seem like the release was meant for the Dutch market.
Then there are some releases that were rereleased and where the original catalog number was also printed on the release.
However, there do seem to be quite a few releases where this check could have worked: I discovered a few "copy to draft" mistakes where people didn't bother to either update the catalog number or the country. Two examples I found is that somoene made an error and labeled a Dutch release as being from New Zealand. The reason is simple: "New Zealand" is following "Netherlands" in the country selection drop down box.
The funniest one I found is this pirate release from The Cats where the original catalog number seems to have been used.
Wrapping up: it turns out that I cannot just simply use the country specific part from EMI catalog numbers to check countries, as there are quite a few exceptions.
I still believe that there is value in these checks so I will definitely be revisiting the topic in the future.
So I thought that it would be trivial to cross reference EMI label numbers and countries in Discogs to see if they would match and clearly see if anyone would have entered the wrong data and then rightfully scold them for it.
But reality turns out to be a bit more complicated than anticipated. What I did is that I looked at all the releases where the catalog number starts with either "5C" or "5c" and checked if the country is The Netherlands. I could find a bit over 6400 releases from the Netherlands:
 |
| Distribution of Dutch releases with EMI catalog numbers starting with 5C |
The much more interesting question is: how many releases are there with EMI catalogue numbers that start with 5C that are actually not from the Netherlands?
As it turns out: quite a few. Some of these are obviously wrong (where the wrong country was picked), but some of them really are from a different country and the catalog number is correct. Good examples are certain releases from Yugoslavia where releases from (mostly) Dutch artists also have the (original) Dutch catalog numbers printed on the releases, such as:
Then there are releases that were made for the Scandinavian markets (which more labels did) that have the 5C catalog numbers, but for example the Scandinavian rights society NCB.
A curious one are the releases from the label Probe. There were quite a few releases from this label that follow the EMI catalog numbering and have the 5C catalog numbers, but where the label says "made in Great Britain". A few examples:
and more. It should be noted that the releases from B.B. King and Tommy Roe listed above actually have a Dutch sleeve that is very typical for early 1970s releases from the Netherlands: bad paper quality and extremely fragile (which makes it very hard to find pristine copies). Also, the design that is used is reminiscent of early 1970s EMI (or related) releases from the Netherlands, which makes it even more confusing.
There are also releases from other labels than Probe that were pressed in the UK, like this release from Deep Purple although the sleeve and rights society (STEMRA) make it seem like the release was meant for the Dutch market.
Then there are some releases that were rereleased and where the original catalog number was also printed on the release.
However, there do seem to be quite a few releases where this check could have worked: I discovered a few "copy to draft" mistakes where people didn't bother to either update the catalog number or the country. Two examples I found is that somoene made an error and labeled a Dutch release as being from New Zealand. The reason is simple: "New Zealand" is following "Netherlands" in the country selection drop down box.
The funniest one I found is this pirate release from The Cats where the original catalog number seems to have been used.
Wrapping up: it turns out that I cannot just simply use the country specific part from EMI catalog numbers to check countries, as there are quite a few exceptions.
I still believe that there is value in these checks so I will definitely be revisiting the topic in the future.
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