As you will be well aware by now, EMI isn’t having the best of weeks.

The Rolling Stones, Kylie, Coldplay and The Verve have all had a go recently, as has Robbie Williams, whose manager compared Robbie’s relationship with EMI to that of a cotton-picking slave with its master, perhaps unaware of the fact that there weren’t many slaves who signed £80 million plus deals with the plantation owner, in return for picking some objectively rubbish cotton.

It appears EMI just can’t cut it in today’s world. 

However, news today suggests that there may be more to them than meets the EM-eye (sorry). 

Robbie Williams' last album, Rudebox, (lyric example: "OK then back to spaceship/ take both pills fuck the matrix/ Jack those jills shake your Playtex/ rock three stripes not the Asics/ A.D.I.D.A.S old school cos it's the best yes/ TK Maxx cost less yes/ Jackson looks a mess bless" – if you managed to read all that without eating your own head in despair then well done) still has more than a million copies sitting around idly in some unfortunate warehouse. Better there than in people’s homes, you may be thinking, but could there be an even better place for them? Guy Hands, owner of EMI records, thinks so. 

Guy plans, in a remarkable act of philanthropy not matched since the feeding of the 4,000, is reportedly going to gather together all these unwanted copies in to one huge pile and – wait for it, wait for the genius bit – crush them and use the recycled dirge to pave streets in China, as part of a new 'Get tough' initiative towards its whinging artists. Guy said:

”Roughly 85 per cent of what EMI does get to release never makes a profit, in part because of the cash spent signing bands and partly due to ill-made bets on the number of CDs the market requires for particular acts… The thing we have been trying to find is a model that will give the artists who cannot support the full functions of a label, some income… We are looking at a number of different alternatives. Once we have finalised that, we will be able to know which artists to keep and which artists frankly and unfortunately we will have to let go.” 

If Guy Hands wants to save even more money, then hecklerspray would like to suggest that instead of using an expensive recycling machine to crush the copies, just let the better portion of the general public do it, with their own delighted stomping feet. It’d be a great publicity stunt, and you’d win many an adoring fan. Also, don't stop at his latest record, buy back all the others you've let loose and pulp them too. You owe it to us. You might as well even pulp Robbie himself whilst you're at it. No one would mind.

We just hope that the crushing is done properly. As if life isn’t bad enough for China’s lost babies, the last thing they want to see as they wither away on the road-side curb is Robbie’s inefficiently-pulped, fat Cheshire cat face smiling them away into the after-life. No siree, Bob.

Read more:

Interview: EMI's Guy Hands - Guardian