There was a super interesting article in the New Yorker a few years ago about the smuggling of unreleased albums out of CD manufacturing plants back in the day. Your experiences remind a lot of that:
Very nostalgic! The article gets most of the history right. I believe kali formed HNA which merged into RNS. Being a computer nerd, I think having pre-released albums in school was the only time I felt cool.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/27/the-man-who-br...