I've been working against Vinyl Digital. Their deals are the worst I've ever seen, unfair and inequitable. Seems they’ve been grossly benefitting from naive and unsuspecting artists who don’t completely understand what they’re agreeing to, who weren't guided with proper legal council, or just didn't think to. It’s flat out robbery. Beyond Yung Bae and what people have assumed with this release, I've found they've (VinDig) been freely releasing content outside of their agreements, or any agreement for that matter, and withholding funds from several artists. I'm dealing with this right now and unfortunately, for a variety of reasons its a difficult topic to address without first taking the appropriate steps...
But what's sad to see here is how quickly people are willing to strike down an artist based on assumptions from a brief tweet and a post, and at the same time demand to purchase their music... Neither party has really addressed the topic in detail, so this whole thing has been arguably impetuous and dramatic, leading to a few different fundamental misunderstandings. From the public’s perspective, the outcome doesn't really matter; fans will get what they purchased or they wont. That conversation of what's in between the a to b is overshadowing some of the more clear, legitimate concerns -- fans want cheaper prices and less flash sales, more straight-forward prints and uncapped sales. After this debacle Yung Bae would be missing the mark (at least in this subreddit community) to not tailor future releases to address those concerns, but for now having a company put out renegade releases with garbage art, missing tracks, and keeping all the profits wont help him get there, or any artist (in this scenario) for that matter.
Circling back to this comment, "I have a feeling Yung Bae probably backed out when he realized he can charge 30$ per Bae album on vinyl instead of 21$ for all four combined into a single 2xLP package.", it’s just simply not the case. It comes down to manufacturing costs. If the difference between the "Bae" release and what Vinyl Digital put out was 10-20 dollars, there would be a more subjectively viable claim. But what's more obvious is this release after (after US conversions) was 24.00. Yung Bae charged 30, that's 6.00 more for a release with custom wax, obi-strips, posters, vinyl stickers, etc. Plus take into account he's outsourcing fulfillment which is another added cost. Thats where this 6.00 increase can be justified. Black wax and a gatefold manufactured in house doesn't come at a high cost, especially for a company already printing a ton of releases to begin with.