Drop #6: Juanita limited drop, 27/5

[King of Snake]

Originally Posted by iamneorev

It's over 10 pounds on Qobuz!!! And if you wanna buy just a single track, like just Juanita 2022 on its own, it's 16 pounds for a single track!!! WTF

I'm sorry, I love UW, but this pricing is absurd. 2 tracks should not be 10 pounds. 5 pounds for Apple lossy is pushing it. I could see lossless/hi-res being 5 pounds, but, still, it's only 2 songs.

And lord forbid, they just post it on their Bandcamp and set the price. I don't know who is figuring out these prices for them, but that is insane.

Yeah I don't understand why they are not using Bandcamp. It seems to fit their ethos much better than being locked in to all these huge corporate stores with lossy quality. Fuck Apple.
I just want to buy FLAC downloads of new Underworld tracks easily for a reasonable price. Is that really too much to ask in 2022?

[iamneorev]

UPDATE
I tried PMing Underworld on Instagram asking about pricing and showing some examples. They responded and said that those digital prices are definitely not right and are looking into it to fix. They escalated it on their side and hope to fix it soon. They were surprisingly quick to respond. I was like, "Hey I'm not trying to be a d--k, but..." lol

Something like this happened with The Chemical Brothers and sadly was never fixed. They reissued a bunch of their singles/ EPs digital a couple of years. The prices were all over the place. A 3 track EP was 8 pounds, a 7 track EP was 14 pounds.

I noticed that Juanita 2022 is attached to UMC aka Universal Music and so were those Chemical Brother EP reissues. It seems UMC have some screwed up pricing practices.

Dark & Long 3 was also priced high on Qobuz. 8 pounds for the 3 track release in lossless, 14 pounds for individual tracks off it.

[TheBang]

Originally Posted by iamneorev

I noticed that Juanita 2022 is attached to UMC aka Universal Music and so were those Chemical Brother EP reissues. It seems UMC have some screwed up pricing practices.

As I understand it, you're right, UMC is responsible for all the digital distribution, including the pricing. I am not hopeful that it will be adjusted. The previous drops also had wonky digital pricing, and those were never changed.

On the bright side, U.S. retailers always had regular pricing for those drops ($1 for lossy tracks, $2 for lossless tracks). On the downside, Juanita 2022 seems to have not been released in the U.S. I hope that's just an oversight.

Originally Posted by purlieu

I really don't understand them having a Bandcamp and then not using it for all these recent drops. It'd be great to have the whole collection there in one place.

So, I was told that UW needed to renegotiate their distribution agreement with UMG in order to be able to post their own digital releases through Bandcamp. I haven't asked about it, but given that they haven't used Bandcamp in over 2 years I'd say that probably means that they weren't able to do that.

Originally Posted by Jon S

Does the tracklisting on the back of the sweatshirt suggest that gig is getting a download release?

I don't think so. They seem to be doing a retrospective riff on the Live in Tokyo release in the run-up to the Japan gigs in July. The promos for those gigs had the same aesthetic.

[Bestbass42]

Well done mate, prices have dropped to normal! Cheers.

[Jon S]

Does the tracklisting on the back of the sweatshirt suggest that gig is getting a download release?
I haven't bought anything this time round... hate missing out but there's only so many Underworld hoodies/sweats a guy can have...

[thee carp dreamer]

Originally Posted by Jon S

Does the tracklisting on the back of the sweatshirt suggest that gig is getting a download release?
I haven't bought anything this time round... hate missing out but there's only so many Underworld hoodies/sweats a guy can have...

Well it should get released properly. Imagine a lovely vinyl boxset. Oh yes oh yes!
Is Juanita 2022 similar to Juanita live in Tokyo 2005?

[melontang]

Originally Posted by Jon S

Does the tracklisting on the back of the sweatshirt suggest that gig is getting a download release?
I haven't bought anything this time round... hate missing out but there's only so many Underworld hoodies/sweats a guy can have...

If it does get a digital release, of course it would be not long after I buy the CD on discogs to get my own high quality audio :/

I bought quite a bit this time. I'll make space

[thee carp dreamer]

The 2022 version is very interesting. It has crowd noise but doesn't sound entirely like the version played in 2017 when I saw them at Alexandra Palace.

So I think it's a remix of the Everything Everything version with new vocals recorded for it.

[potatobroth]

Originally Posted by thee carp dreamer

The 2022 version is very interesting. It has crowd noise but doesn't sound entirely like the version played in 2017 when I saw them at Alexandra Palace

Found this really weird. I kept thinking I?d found the live version of the track. Very rarely am I?m underwhelmed - but this time sadly I am. It just felt really strange to have a half live version; totally distracting.

[purlieu]

I really don't understand them having a Bandcamp and then not using it for all these recent drops. It'd be great to have the whole collection there in one place.

Really enjoying this new version, anyway. A really nice development of the piece that still retains a lot of the original's magic.

edit: just got an email from their Bandcamp page... with a link to the official site. Baffling.