Lorde | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: So there's Lord who's she's been around for a while. I think, right, yes, she's got a new CD. And this is from the Verge dot com. So you know, sometimes when releasing physical media, people like to come up with cool gimmicks, you know, like back in the days of when vinyl was was well. Of course, vinyl has had such a resurgence over the past decade, but you know, sometimes with Vinyl people tried to do cool stuff, release limited edition vinyl. I remember I still recall when Dan of Dan Randall and the Randlettes some people will know, when he showed me he had bought the the Kiss single for Unholy that came out in ninety two, and it was they put it out on limited edition white vinyl.

0:49 Speaker 1: It was so cool.

0:50 Speaker 2: Anyway, My favorite was a Stix album that I think it was Paradise Theater that actually had the theater in the album like the visual. Yeah, you had to hold the album a certain way to see the Yeah, to see it.

1:04 Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean I always love stuff like that.

1:06 Speaker 1: Yeah, pick picture discs they call them, yeah, and those are cool. And you know, some artists have tried to do things unique and innovative with CDs, as well not just vinyl. And Lord's new CD is transparent. You can see through it. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you know, you can always go go find a picture of it online. It's interesting. It's it's completely clear. You can see right through it, right through it. What a cool idea, right, yeah? Actually, well there's only one problem, and this is from the Verge dot com.

1:40 Speaker 1: Lord's new CD is so transparent that stereos can't even read it.

1:45 Speaker 3: Oh god, that's so terrible.

1:47 Speaker 1: And there's only one version and it doesn't work on most players. So this is from the Verge. It says Lord fans are clearly struggling to play the CD version of her new album, consumers who purchase the special edition of Virgin released on a transparent plastic disc, or reporting on Reddit and TikTok that many CD players car serios and other sound systems they've tried to play it on are unable to play it. The transparent CD, promoted it as being fully recyclable, is currently sold out on Lord's web store and was the only disc variant available for the Virgin album.

2:26 Speaker 1: So, in other words, if you don't want the clear CD, if you want something you can actually play. You can't even get it. Nope, So that may have come as a that may have been a welcome compromise for fans, given the singer opted to forego a CD release entirely for her twenty twenty one album Solar Power over waste and environmental concerns, but little comfort to customers who can't purchase alternative options. One Reddit user said, quote, very cool looking and I'm not going to return it, but doesn't work in three of my top players, PC was able to rip.

2:59 Speaker 1: The files are not great. There's distortion and clipping. User unquote. User reports indicate that older hardware is less likely to work with the CDD than devices with newer sensors, So you know, we should just stress that so people know. It's not that it doesn't play at all. You just have to have a new, a very new CD player apparently that is able to actually read the data on it. Because as one person pointed out, and this isn't from the article I saw this on uh, I saw this on another post. Somebody said, Hey, you know it's completely clearer.

3:38 Speaker 1: There's no silver coding, but isn't the silver where the data is stored.

3:43 Speaker 3: God, that's true.

3:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's true. So apparently it's so so if you have a newer CD player you can play it, but older ones car serios won't play it. Uh, it's it's you're just sol it says here. One talk user demonstrated that her car CD player was an unable to recognize the disc and said that forcing the CD inside resulted in automatic ejection, mirroring similar reports made in Reddit comments. Uh this redditor said, quote, whoever decided to design this as an idiot? Cars can't read the CD. Walkman's can't read the CD.

4:22 Speaker 1: You need to create CDs that are fit for purpose of for the medium in which they are played on, which is older technology. Unquote.

4:32 Speaker 3: No, you should update your technology, but that's your it's your fault. You didn't update your technology. Right here the greatness of the desk.

4:39 Speaker 1: If you're a true Lord fan, you know this reminds me of a There's a podcaster who we know who always complains about people not listening to his podcast on good quality equipment and expects everyone to upgrade their equipment when they listened to his amazing must yes yes, how he how he knows how people are consuming this content. I have no idea.

5:04 Speaker 2: But what I don't get is like, didn't they test it out on They must have like only played it on the very best.

5:12 Speaker 1: That must that must be what happened.

5:13 Speaker 3: Yeah, and nobody bothered to go, hey, let me go see if this will work in my car.

5:17 Speaker 1: That that's probably what happened, it says here. Lord has yet to address any of the issues raised about the transparent Virgin CD. The official came uh. The official cause of the playability issues also has not been confirmed. It's certainly striking. It's certainly a striking disc. CDs with even partially clear designs are uncommon and can be a hit with collectors, but the lack of functionality in this example has been a bitter experience for some Lord fans.

5:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, I can imagine, I got a pretty disc, I can't play it.

5:51 Speaker 1: One TikTok user said, quote, seems like they didn't account for this pretty disappointing. I know it was for an aesthetic, but at least press it on normal CD unquote. Yeah, that's the other weird thing. It's like, why wouldn't you also put out well a non clear.

6:09 Speaker 3: Edition because they thought that it was going to play and everything.

6:12 Speaker 1: Well, I also wonder if they thought that people might this is Wow. There's a picture here in this article two of the disc of someone holding up the disc and yeah, it's very clear. Yeah, I'd be pretty skeptical. Like if someone handed that to me and said, here, play this, I'd be like, uh, what is this? Is this actually a CD? What are you giving me here? Yeah?

6:35 Speaker 2: It looks kind of it doesn't You're right, it doesn't look like any disc that you've seen before. Yeah, but it's cute and it's quirky, and if it had played on everything, it would have been great. And that's probably why they didn't print regular ones. But then maybe they should go back and do that now and like offer people, you know, hey, you bought this disc, it's great, but here's one you can actually listen to, right, Like that would be great to do for Yeah, that would make it better. Yeah, But to spend the money to buy the thing and you can't play the music, that's It's not just about aesthetics.

7:07 Speaker 3: I mean, you want to hear what's on it.

7:10 Speaker 1: Unless they also made the calculation, it's possible that someone made the calculation that people weren't going to buy this discs to play it, But people are going to buy this disc just to have it.

7:21 Speaker 3: I think that's silly.

7:22 Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing. The only reason I think someone might have thought that is because, you know my theory about vinyl. I've said it all the time that when when artists release new vinyl, you know, because some of the guests that we've had on the show, for example, they'll they'll do vinyl. And I always say that My theory is most people who buy new vinyl don't even have a record player. They just buy it because they want to have it, Like, they never even necessarily open it. They just want to really support that artist, so they'll buy it just to you know, maybe put the artwork on the wall or something, or just just to have it because they want to support that artist, not because they actually have a record player that they're going to play it on.

8:01 Speaker 1: You know what I mean.

8:02 Speaker 2: I do know what you mean, But I honestly think in this instance, it's just not the equivalency.

8:08 Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I'm just I'm just wondering if someone maybe had that theory though, Like maybe somebody had a theory to my theory about violin they thought it would have even if.

8:15 Speaker 3: That was the theory. Why would you print only discs that you can't listen to? Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.

8:22 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so it's pretty strange, and apparently it's not being addressed. I guess it just came out because this story just broke a couple of days ago.

8:30 Speaker 3: I'm sure that she anticipated that the disc was going to.

8:33 Speaker 2: Work, you know, I highly doubt that it was sold to her as Hey, we want to print millions.

8:38 Speaker 3: Of your desk, but we don't want them to be able to necessarily play unless you got expensive equipment.

8:43 Speaker 1: Yeah.

8:44 Speaker 3: Yeah, unless you have new equipment. It done work.

8:48 Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, and that done not good. So well, hopefully everyone learns something from this.

8:54 Speaker 3: Yes, do not make.

8:56 Speaker 2: It clear unless they find a better material used to make them on that can actually be read.

9:02 Speaker 3: They kind of need the silver part.

9:04 Speaker 1: Yeah like that.

9:05 Speaker 3: One person wrote