ChaosMusic

Web Site: www.chaosmusic.com

Chaos has recently purchased Gaslight Records in Melbourne and have recently combined their catalogues. This has resulted in a major improvement in the breadth of music offered by Chaos and the pricing.

One of the major problems with Chaos is the search engine. The results screen lists all the findings in no particular order. It can be impossible to distinguish between similarly named titles (eg U2, Best of 1980-90), no price is given on this screen and there is no designation or split of Singles, Albums and Imports.

Chaos's pricing has improved enormously from earlier surveys conducted by Comp@re. The standard albumn rate now seems to be in the A$23-25 range. The good thing about Chaos's new catalogue is that you can now choose whether to have goods shipped from Australia (by Gaslight Records) or the United States (by Valley Media). Which method is the cheapest is difficult to work out, it depends on the albumn (but remeber shipping from the US is more expensive).

Additionally for orders over $50 Chaos have introduced free shipping (whether from Australia or the US). This is a great offer and makes Chaos quite competitive, especially for the US orders where the shipping is a high proportion of the overall price.

As all prices are in Australian Dollars you don't have to worry about currency conversions which is handy. Chaos also offers the ability to call a 1800 number to give your credit card details if you are worried about doing this over the Internet.