When Charli xcx announced that filmmaker David Cronenberg — a man whose career has been defined by the uneasy border between flesh and machine — would contribute a spoken-word meditation on art, death, and eternity to No One Lasts Forever, the closing track of her new album Music, Fashion, Film, the anticipation was considerable. The album debuted at number one in the UK. Variety called the Cronenberg collaboration "the heart of what the album is really about." Fans who had paid a premium to pre-order the vinyl edition, however, found something quieter and less complete waiting for them in the sleeve: Cronenberg's voice was simply absent, cut from the physical record because, as Charli explained on the Tape Notes podcast, the production team could not secure his contribution before the vinyl deadline.

Animesh Khare, a 27-year-old listener in Paris, articulated what many collectors felt when he learned of the omission. He argued that artists and labels owe fans the transparency to communicate such differences before money is spent on physical media — a position that is difficult to refute when the vinyl format commands both a higher price and a promise of permanence. Charli xcx is not alone in this. Fans of Olivia Rodrigo documented unexpected edits — missing bridges, truncated outros — across roughly half a dozen tracks on the vinyl edition of her third album.

Raye, whose second release carried the hopeful title This Album May Contain Hope, later acknowledged that several songs on the physical pressing had not received their final mix, offering an apology and, somewhat optimistically, the suggestion that the unfinished copies might one day be considered collectibles.