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The Discussion of MJ's Unreleased Tracks

Okay this is going to be a longer post.

First of all, I've got to admit I initially believed the copy of "Bubbles" uploaded by Motif was authentic, simply because I wasn't quite familiar with his "memey" content on YouTube.

As a fan of Michael and his music I keep finding the whole collector community here pretty weird. I have already explained my stance on 1-second/manipulated/AI "enhanced" leaks here earlier, but I keep finding about more and more animosity between individual collectors here which I had never witnessed before.

In the past couple of years I've been able to get in contact with a few collectors of one of my other favourite singers (I won't reveal who). The singer's got lots of unreleased material circulating online leaked by fans (albeit in slightly edited (fan edits) or low-quality copies), which is slowly being taken down by the singer's estate and SME. The whole collectors community is very friendly, but is a bit secretive and prefers to not talk about unreleased material often. The reason is that the majority of the circulated material originates from studio discs/DATs sold by one of the singer's past close friends amid a financial crisis. The material was then distributed by some collectors on CDs sold to select fans, who have likely promised to not share any copies of the material publicly. Some of them violated that promise and kept circulating copies online, which have eventually made their way onto forums and YouTube. Among the material are songs worked on by the singer as part of an unreleased collaboration project; those songs are being taken down by the friend himself, who essentially served as the executive producer for the project.

Within the whole community, there's only one collector who keeps "bragging" about material he owns but never reveals any details about it. He has uploaded short snippets of some of the songs he owns in the past, but he's also known for submitting fake/non-existent items on Discogs and making up 'facts'. To cut a story short, he's a gatekeeping attention-seeker. I've been enjoying chats with the other collectors, who are very friendly and open to sharing new information, albeit with carefulness. I strongly believe those collectors shouldn't be classified as "gatekeepers"; they are simply cautious because lots of people who have repeatedly promised to keep the material for themselves kept circulating copies online, and although I'd surely wish to hear all those tracks, I think their choice should be respected.

Now, I don't want to attack anyone personally, simply because I'm not in any way angaged with, don't fully know nor understand the 'behind-the-scenes' stuff and relations between all the collectors here, but as a fan who seeks more knowledge about Michael's unreleased songs I keep finding there are lots of gatekeepers and attention-seekers within the MJ collector community who literally can't stand each other, be it because of their behavior or because of ego issues. I'm not disputing anyone's credibility here; I don't even want to and I'm grateful for all the info they are able and willing to give us, but deconstructing individual songs, isolating and removing their parts, "reduxing"/"remastering" the songs, stuffing them on top of each other, compressing them down to hell and then leaking a 1-second copy with absolutely no context given should be criminal. It's an injustice to any artist and the fan community as a whole. I'm not suprised that lots of newcomers or even long-time fans here have doubts about the authenticity of everything that leaks, because man, the way the songs are altered nowadays is absolutely insane.

EDIT: That doesn't mean I want Motif to stop uploading any of his content. I know he's also manipulating songs to a big degree, but he explicitly shows his memey way of "leaking" stuff, and I have to admit I find it funny. Keep on posting.
 
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Gluepix said:
The verses on this are really good (assuming they’re based on the real deal); I can definitely see how Rocker resembles Queen’s We Will Rock You in composition now:

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The verses are the only part I think resemble WWRY tbh. I never understood the comparison until I heard that bit. Really weird song but catchy
 
SeriousFX said:
May I drop in the reason why collectors have become like this?

It's because doors keep closing because of the underhanded actions of leakers. Secretly recording collectors whose trust they've earned, buying stuff off them and mass-selling them for insanely cheap prices where they'll eventually leak, sending followers after collectors to get stuff for them, etc. It's what I've seen in communities like this and a certain other community I'm in.

Back in the day, these communities were still secretive, but they were more-or-less built on trust. But things changed as more snake-like and untrustworthy people got their hands on what they've gained. Armed with a belief that everyone should have these, not knowing - or caring - about the consequences, they began employing many underhanded tactics to distribute the tracks/packs more widely. The result is: the leakers didn't get into trouble because the files have been distributed en masse, but the collectors do with their sources, or more accurately, the sources get in trouble with the record company.

It's why leaks have dried up and things have gone radio-silent outside a few bursts of activity. I don't condone some of the more extreme cases of gatekeeping the community does (especially not Korg's tendency to hide useless info like track times and when they were recorded/mixed), but their reluctance to share is relatively understandable and can be explained by cases like these. That's not to say some of them weren't always filled with their own ego, but others I've met have had the same testimony.

To put it bluntly: collectors are now playing with fire, and they don't want to get burnt in the process.
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I used to collect MJ stuff back in the day but about 2023 onward or so I stopped messing with this community all together. I don't know why it is MJ specifically but this community has such a weird relationship with unreleased material compared to the other artists' spaces. I've never seen an artist with so many fake leaks and so much weird bad blood and back stabbing bts. Not to mention (in my opinion) all of the best stuff has already been leaked/released and the stuff that is available to be bought bought, traded, etc is not really worth a lot of money. MJ is basically the only artist in my favorites that I don't bother with anymore in terms of collecting. I do understand people who paid alot of money for songs not wanting to leak things like Korg for example because that would be a financial loss. Me personally I would do GBs (this is common for just about every artist aside from MJ) for new material, it is clear the estate does not care about unreleased songs that much and that would be the only way to hear new stuff aside from the petty Discord drama that results in a brand new 6 second MQ snippet leaking woopee!!
 
Clay7 said:
I used to collect MJ stuff back in the day but about 2023 onward or so I stopped messing with this community all together. I don't know why it is MJ specifically but this community has such a weird relationship with unreleased material compared to the other artists' spaces. I've never seen an artist with so many fake leaks and so much weird bad blood and back stabbing bts. Not to mention (in my opinion) all of the best stuff has already been leaked/released and the stuff that is available to be bought bought, traded, etc is not really worth a lot of money. MJ is basically the only artist in my favorites that I don't bother with anymore in terms of collecting. I do understand people who paid alot of money for songs not wanting to leak things like Korg for example because that would be a financial loss. Me personally I would do GBs (this is common for just about every artist aside from MJ) for new material, it is clear the estate does not care about unreleased songs that much and that would be the only way to hear new stuff aside from the petty Discord drama that results in a brand new 6 second MQ snippet leaking woopee!!
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Agreed; the MJ collector community is toxic to the point that I just don’t want to have anything to do with it anymore, lol.
 
Tyler446 said:
Is this accurate to how it sounds in HQ?
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Had this been fine tuned in time, it should've been on Victory.

I wonder what other songs were submitted since Victory was originally set to be co-produced by Toto.
 
I agree with everything that’s been said.
The trading scene has changed drastically over the past ten years, and honestly, I don’t think there’s another fan community as toxic as the MJ fandom. What really frustrates me is how people act like you’re the worst person alive just because you don’t immediately share your rare material. They don’t seem to realize that sometimes you’re dealing with people who trust you, or that you’ve paid a lot of money for those items.

There are also things that were never meant to leak in the first place — for good reasons — like the “Munich mic feed.” But most of the time, it’s just that people can’t keep secrets for more than a week.

If it were up to me, I’d prefer that we all just share what we have — no more trades, no more selling, none of that. I’ve seen other fan communities that work like that, where nothing is held back from others, and it’s just a much healthier environment overall.
 
BlackAnon said:
LOL no call outs, just stating facts.

I said it before somewhere in this thread but when a few of us, and by a few, I mean no more than 5, were gifted copies of the Victory tour, we kept it to ourselves and barely spoke to each other about it until one of us felt the need to post a snippet to brag about it. He eventually leaked the entire show but that would've still been sitting in our hard drives had he not wanted the attention.
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i had that too xD
 
MJ5 said:
I mostly agree.

But why does it hinder the estate to release leaked tracks like "Chicage 1945"? Only us fans know about songs like Hot Street before they get an official release, don't you think?
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To a degree, yeah. The estate has also made it clear that they have no issue with releasing leaked or previously released music. I just think it dulls the excitement. XSCAPE, for example, consisting of eight tracks, six of which we’d had for years by that point. Of course the onus is ultimately on us for listening, but it’s still a bit of a letdown.
 
AlwaysThere said:
To a degree, yeah. The estate has also made it clear that they have no issue with releasing leaked or previously released music. I just think it dulls the excitement. XSCAPE, for example, consisting of eight tracks, six of which we’d had for years by that point. Of course the onus is ultimately on us for listening, but it’s still a bit of a letdown.
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Ironically my favorite two unreleased songs are Lovin' You and Who Do You Know, and both of those never leaked before. We really knew nothing about them. In a sense, it was like brand new music.
 
@GYWOOM Do you have "Don't Make Me Stay"? Is there any new info you can give on it? It's weird to me that this song goes so off the radar since it's a song from the late era that we know has full MJ vocals which is quite rare all things considered.
 
I’ll do you one better: can you describe all the material you have? Not to be pushy, but given all the misinformation going around I’m sure we’d all appreciate any clarification you can provide.
ChanceToDance said:
@GYWOOM Do you have "Don't Make Me Stay"? Is there any new info you can give on it? It's weird to me that this song goes so off the radar since it's a song from the late era that we know has full MJ vocals which is quite rare all things considered.
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If I’m not mistaken, the era was never clarified and the vocals are all mumbled / unintelligible.
 
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