Karmastition Alicia Keys

This was serviced on a TM Studios PrimeCuts CD in 2005, but it is lossy (from mp3) on that disc. It sounds like it probably came from a 192kbps mp3 (just a guess). This mix was a bootleg, as far as I know, and not officially released by J Records.

As a side note, I was going through a box of random CDs a couple months ago, and I came across a CD-R that simply had "Karmastition" written on it in sharpie. The sound quality was pretty bad (worse than the TM copy I have), and the disc was scratched to hell, so I tossed it. In all likelihood, it was burned by someone who worked at the station where it came from.

It wouldn't surprise me if the vinyl is lossy, too. The remix is a bootleg, and the person who created it could've "mastered" it as an mp3.

You might be shocked to know that hundreds of big hits have been serviced to radio only as lossy files over the years. By the early 2000s, the internet was much faster and everyone owned a CD burner. Record company promotions departments were sometimes given the task of "pressing up" promo copies to send to radio stations. They used whatever source they had, which sometimes was just an mp3. The disc would then be sent to the music service companies, like TM, and they would rip the disc as a wav file, but it's too late. The disc was already burned using an mp3.

It's maddening for people like us who want the best possible source/sound, but we are rare. The overwhelming majority could care less and probably can't tell the difference between an mp3 and a wav file.