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New MoFi 'Off The Wall' Master One-Step Pressing Announced

On the German side, the expected delivery date is 21.2.2025 why the delay is annoying
 
Yay, it arrived!

First impressions - very poor packaging, again. I'm spending $50 for a product I will listen to for the next 3 decades, I don't want this cardboard nonsense. No matter how well you care for it, it's gonna get greasy/worn/torn. Plus there's an increased chance of scratching the disc every time you slide it in and out. It's just not good enough.

Also strange there's nowhere to put the booklet/leaflet (ie no pocket on the front part that folds out). You gotta put it in with the disc every time?! There's barely enough space.

Minor point, the front sticker was on the cellophane so hard that I could not get it off, ended up having to throw it away (with Thriller I was at least able to salvage it and stick it on the box).

MoFi used to have great plastic boxes. 😢

It's lost a star on my review before I've even listened to it.
 
R1chard said:
My issues with vinyl are:
  1. It's much less convenient than CD to skip tracks, etc
  2. It's not portable
  3. It's environmentally damaging
  4. It doesn't actually sound as good as a CD
  5. It gets worse every time you play it.
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R1chard said:
I don't want this cardboard nonsense.

MoFi used to have great plastic boxes. 😢
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Ok, I've had 2 listens. The first one was too quiet to form any sort of comparison. Here follows a mini-review, ie my first impressions.

The opening track had a nice sense of urgency. Everything seemed to sound exactly as you would want it to. Really makes you want to listen to the rest of the album.

Rock With You, the guitar was the main thing that sounded different. I'd never really noticed that instrument particularly. Working Day And Night, several elements were really clear, mainly vocals. Get On The Floor seemed very well balanced.

Off The Wall, the percussion seemed to stand out, in a head-turning way. Girlfriend, some sort of synth bass at the beginning sounded different. Similarly, I never paid any attention to the sax(?) break before, but I do now.

On a simple song like She's Out Of My Life, the vocals really come to life. The subtle intro to I Can't Help It made good use of the stereo separation, and the percussion also stood out on this one.

It's the Falling In Love seemed particularly tight, highlights the great playing by the band. For Burn This Disco Out, the bass stood out, whereas for me the horns and strings had always dominated the song in previous versions.

Shawn Britton did a great job.
 
R1chard said:
Following on from this, it was against Michael's wishes for any of his music to be online. He was a firm believer in physical-only.
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Yeah. He also died in 2009, well before streaming took off and even before digital really had a strong foothold over CD. While I understand the point you're trying to make, it doesn't really hold water in 2025 where streaming is the dominant way people consume music. Who's really to say what Michael's thoughts on the matter would be today? We'll never know the answer to that so it's kinda pointless to hold onto a quote of his from years ago as sacrosanct.

Stanley Kubrick famously went on record before his passing to state that he preferred the open matte, full frame transfers of his films for home video as opposed to the matted widescreen transfers that were exhibited in theaters. His main reasoning for this was that before his passing, 480p res, 4:3 television screens were the standard and the resolution and tech to translate widescreen imagery to home video just wasn't there enough to appease filmmakers like Kubrick and James Cameron (who also went on record as preferring open matte presentations). Had Kubrick lived into the HD era where 16:9 is now the screen standard, I'm more than sure that his thoughts on the matter would have changed. We now have 4K and TV sizes exceeding 100 inches. Those kinds of home video compromises are no longer necessary.

Also, I must stress that I am a die hard physical media collector so none of what I say is out of any sort of bias for streaming. I just think it's silly to assume that Michael's stance on something like this, given where technology was 20 years ago compared to now, would still be his opinion today.
 
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Yeah, a friend who ordered the SACD from the MJ site said he got an email today.

So yeah, it's very disappointing that the site many people will use is both ridiculously expensive and ridiculously late...


Mike P. said:
Yeah. He also died in 2009, well before streaming took off and even before digital really had a strong foothold over CD. While I understand the point you're trying to make, it doesn't really hold water in 2025 where streaming is the dominant way people consume music. Who's really to say what Michael's thoughts on the matter would be today?
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We know that MJ's stance on this had nothing to do with the quality, or the technology, or how people listen to music. The simple reason is because he was just after sales numbers. He wanted people physically to own a product that they would have on their shelf, so that it would be included in his lifetime total. That's why he was against downloads/streaming, because they don't involve a sale. He just wanted to keep setting records of millions of copies being sold.

And the fact is, there is no meaningful equivalent to sales numbers with the industry today. You don't get that same "this album is number one because it sold x number of copies, and the other album sold y copies".

Therefore, nothing is different today that would change his mind. Therefore, it's entirely conceivable that he would have exactly the same opinion today as he did 20 years ago.
 
The price is already very high, I wonder if it is very limited
 
R1chard said:
Yeah, a friend who ordered the SACD from the MJ site said he got an email today.

So yeah, it's very disappointing that the site many people will use is both ridiculously expensive and ridiculously late...




We know that MJ's stance on this had nothing to do with the quality, or the technology, or how people listen to music. The simple reason is because he was just after sales numbers. He wanted people physically to own a product that they would have on their shelf, so that it would be included in his lifetime total. That's why he was against downloads/streaming, because they don't involve a sale. He just wanted to keep setting records of millions of copies being sold.

And the fact is, there is no meaningful equivalent to sales numbers with the industry today. You don't get that same "this album is number one because it sold x number of copies, and the other album sold y copies".

Therefore, nothing is different today that would change his mind. Therefore, it's entirely conceivable that he would have exactly the same opinion today as he did 20 years ago.
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streams make money… michael jackson being one of the biggest artists to ever exist he would have been raking in inconceivable amounts of money despite how low the pay per stream is because of his stature
 
mjfanboy27 said:
The price is already very high, I wonder if it is very limited
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For the SACD, Thriller had 40,000 copies, I think OTW was 6,000. I might have expected more like 10,000 sales. Both albums have a six-digit serial number on the back, presumably all copies of OTW start with 00_.

As far as I can tell, Thriller is almost impossible to get. I'm sure this album will go the same way. Last I checked it was sold out on the MoFi website.

webslinger said:
streams make money
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Actually, they don't. Once I pay a $10 monthly subscription fee, it doesn't matter if I listen to 1 song or 500 songs, it doesn't generate any more or less money. Counting streams is just something Spotify thought up as a way to calculate how the royalties are split.

Again, Michael was interested in breaking records. It was all about selling a bigger number than anybody else (eg selling 4 colored copies of Invincible). Nobody cares about streams because they don't mean anything. Too easy to manipulate, etc. that's why Michael was anti-download/streaming, because there was no way for him to claim a win.
 
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I looked on ebay are some copies Thriller mofi and off the Wall with sacds on Amazon nothing yet because I rather buy there
 
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