To Leak, Or Not To Leak?: Why The Labels Need To Learn To Chill Out And Float On

On Feb. 15th, MP3 files from an advance copy of Modest Mouse’s We Were Dead… showed up onto the web, nearly five weeks before the album’s official release date. Mouse fans with even the slightest bit of web savvy could now download their own version of the album, and within days, message boards and blogs were bustling with pro-or-con discussions, many of which were poorly hyphenated, and more than a little caustic. The fans had the record, free of charge; there was really no reason to expect they’d show up a month later and actually purchase a copy.

But during its debut week, Dead went on to sell 129,000 copies–enough to put the album at the top of the Billboard chart, and to once again prove what we’ve been saying for years: Leaks don’t hurt.

For comparison’s sake, here are a few other high-profile releases that leaked before their official release date, along with their first-week sales:

Jay-Z, Kingdom Come (680,000) Young Jeezy, The Inspiration (352,000) Nas, Hip-Hop Is Dead (355,000) The Shins, Wincing The Night Away (118,000) Fall Out Boy, Infinity On High (260,000) The Arcade Fire, Neon Bible (92,000)

Granted, in the days before file-sharing networks, these numbers would likely have been much bigger–especially for Jay-Z, who promoted Kingdom as if it were a summer tent-pole movie (a really unsatisfying summer tent-pole movie, but still). And many of these records experienced massive drop-offs in their second and third weeks of release. But the fact remains that even widespread, long-lead leaks–the Shins record got out a good three months before its release date–aren’t as bad as the record industry thinks, and that all the protective measures undertaken by managers and publicists (watermarking, listening sessions) before a record’s release aren’t worth the effort anymore. Here are a few reasons why:

1) Leaks spur awareness This will sound absurd to those who spend every waking hour obsessing over new releases, but one of the biggest goals of any publicity campaign is to make sure that the people who would presumably want to buy the record know that it’s coming out. This has traditionally been accomplished by media saturation, warm-up tours, and costly campaigns. But an Internet leak gets the music to people who will spread the word for free, allowing label executives to jab their tentacles into fans’ heads and plant the following message: Take these songs. Play them everywhere. Tell your friends the street date–but don’t use the phrase “street date,” because it will sound as if my tentacles told you to say that. Help us build buzz! Oh, and don’t use “buzz” either.

2) The fans will always show up We’re guessing that a good percentage of those 129,000 Modest Mouse consumers already owned the album, and that the only time they pick up the CD is to scan the lyrics sheet. Even as music becomes quicker and easier to access–and therefore, more disposable–there will always be loyalty among die-hard supporters, who feel a personal connection to the artist, and therefore want to support them. This seems especially true for two demographics: American Idol viewers and indie-rock lovers.* All the more reason for Chris Sligh to sign with Merge.

3) They can’t stop it anyway Seriously. All the closed-door listening sessions and super-watermarked discs in the world are no match for some 14-year-old in Helsinki who knows someone with Icky Thump. If the labels acknowledge this–instead of spending countless hours and dollars forcing a clamp-down that’s doomed to fail–maybe they can create a new promotional cycle, one in which leaks are used to acquire new listeners while rallying the already on-board fans. Some artists are already thinking this way: Just last week, a promo copy of Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky showed up at the Idolator flophouse, free of any copy protection whatsoever. We were excited to see that one of the world’s most respected bands was embracing the future. And then we went and listened to the copy we had BitTorrented a month ago.

* Your Idolators do not agree on the latter. Feel free to prove us right/wrong.