I went to PS 112 in Astoria to vote this morning, and while the school's lobby was bake-sale-free, casting my ballot and walking to the subway put me in a good mood. The sun was shining, the air was crisp, and the promise of not being bombarded with election-related speculation was close on the horizon, at least until some idiot commentator utters the word "2012" while scrambling to fill space on whatever cable-news channel has given him airtime. Which is probably why I had Andrew WK's "Party Hard" in my head: Sure, it was barely after nine in the morning and I was on my way back to work, instead of heading out for the evening, but my heart felt right—like it was enjoying some wine, canapes, and total fucking raging. And isn't that what matters? A counterpoint party song, and a rundown of some notable stories that got lost in the Election Day shuffle, after the jump.

• The most recent Google News alert for "Jarvis Cocker" comes from a Telegraph piece on an auction benefiting the British music-therapy outfit Nordoff-Robbins: "U2 guitarist The Edge paid £15,000 for the Spitting Image puppet of Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker." [Telegraph]
• Scott Weiland's Happy In Galoshes leaked today. I tracked it down, and it took me—I am not kidding—an hour to download the damn thing once I found it. And I was only planning on spending an hour with it in the first place! [Did It Leak]
• Genesis can't dance, nor can they wean themselves from the reunion-show teat: Now they're holding out hope that Peter Gabriel will join them for one more tour of the world. [Billboard]
• The idea that Google is facing off against Dolly Parton in the battle over the wireless spectrum sure seems to contradict the company's longstanding "Don't be evil" policy, no? [NYT]
• If you work at MTV Networks, you may want to brush up your resume. [Gawker]
• Keri Hilson's album has been pushed back for the 143rd time. [Billboard]
• I showed this story on Japanese music producers being arrested on conspiracy and fraud charges to friend-of-Idolator Reed Fischer, and he replied, "Someone in this story is going to get thrown off a balcony." Or option their tale to Jet Li. [Yomiuri Daily Online]

Andrew W.K. - Party Hard [Dailymotion]
Pulp - Party Hard [YouTube]

The felony Cogill was charged under requires the authorities to prove the distribution of pre-released, commercial material over the internet for financial gain or commercial advantage.

Under the misdemeanor statute, the authorities must prove copyright infringement of the right of performance, distribution or reproduction accomplished for commercial gain or financial advantage. Using the internet is not required and the material does not need to be pre-release.

Insert your own joke about it being so hard for music blogs to make money that one being thought of as a "for-profit" operation is kind of ludicrous here.

Reduced Charges for Guns N' Roses Uploader, Deal 'in the Offing' [Threat Level]

I DID NOT LEAK ROBOCOP!!!... THAT'S NOT EVEN THE FINISHED VERSION... I'M PRETTY UPSET ABOUT IT BUT THAT'S THE WAY LIFE IS SOMETIMES! [kanYe West: Blog]
Kanye West - Robocop [YouTube]

That estimate doesn't include downloads from third-party sites like Rapidshare, which was definitely used to acquire at least one copy of the album (cough, cough). Sure, this experiment is helped by AC/DC's catalog is still selling relatively well; last week, Back In Black scanned 9,200 copies, landing it at No. 2 on the Pop Catalog chart (it would have placed in the mid-60s were it still on the Billboard 200). Perhaps because of this staying power, Wal-Mart has apparently guaranteed that the album would sell 2.5 million copies—not only would that be a drop in the bucket compared to the BitTorrent numbers, it'd be a big uptick from the not-even-platinum scans of 2000's Stiff Upper Lip, and a ballsy move in a miserable climate for people wanting to spend money on essentials, let alone CDs. But apparently the Arkansas megachain is the place for fans of Angus and his mates to shop:

Although AC/DC was criticized by religious groups in the ’80s for songs like “Highway to Hell” (which is actually about the difficulty of life on the road), the band is so popular at Wal-Mart that the chain was responsible for half the band’s sales last year, according to Columbia. The retailer is setting up special areas devoted to AC/DC in each of its stores, where it will sell the band’s albums, DVDs and “Rock Band” game, as well as a selection of T-shirts and other clothing. At a time when music stores are closing, the band says the Wal-Mart deal makes sense.

Indeed, Wal-Mart is the only place for many people to find copies of new albums these days. But will that exclusivity even matter to consumers when they're nervous about scrounging up the cash for that week's meals, and when a free copy of Black Ice is only a Google search away?

Ageless and Defiant, AC/DC Stays on Top Without Going Digital [NYT]
AC/DC Downloads Hit 400,000 Prior To Physical Release [Inquisitr]
Earlier: AC/DC Barrel On Down The Road

"In the past, these may have been viewed as victimless crimes," said Craig Missakian, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles who built the case with the FBI and recording-industry investigators. "But in reality, there's significant damage. This law allows us to prosecute these cases." ....

Missakian, the assistant U.S. attorney, said his office would bring more cases like this in the future.

"Prosecution like this makes others think twice," he said.

Ronald Rosen, an entertainment industry lawyer, said record labels lost the public relations battle when they sued people who distributed music over file-sharing networks, with stories emerging of single mothers defending cases over songs they could have bought for 99 cents.

"But the public is going to have much less sympathy with pirates" who trade in pre-released material," he said.

Which I think is a key distinction here. Cogill probably didn't help his case by posting them on a site that had his name attached to it. He's said over and over that he's aware of the consequences of his actions; one wonders, if OiNK had been around, if just uploading them to that cordoned-off, semi-anonymous site would have caused the same seismic reaction from law enforcement—and if it would have given the Guns N' Roses camp someone as prominent to blame. (Side note: I'd advise his co-blogger who said to the Times that Chinese Democracy is benefiting from the "pre-release publicity" to maybe do a Google News search on this album and see that it's had more than enough of that.)

Blogger Kevin Cogill charged with felony in leak of Guns N' Roses songs [LAT]
The United States Of America Cares A Lot About Democracy [Antiquiet]

"I wasn't sure if they were going to come by with a warrant and trash the place, like in the movies," he says. "It was nothing like that." The FBI officials wanted to see the original files, but Skwerl erased them last week per instructions from Axl Rose's attorneys. Skwerl ultimately gave them second-hand files that are now widely available on the Internet.

Last week Skwerl's blog crashed from the traffic flood that resulted from his controversial posting. "My host contacts me and says, 'What the fuck did you do?'" I go, "Uhhhh. I posted some music." He goes, "What exactly did you post?" I go, "Uhhhh. [Meek voice] New Guns n' Roses." He goes, "Motherfucker." Before long his cell phone rang with an unfamiliar 323 number. "It was a really cool guy from the Gn'R camp that was a middle man between someone who was very angry and me. He was trying to reach out and see if I'd go without a fight, which is more or less what I did."

Skwerl agreed to take them down, but a cease-and-desist letter soon followed threatening possible legal action. "I'm not so worried about that," Skwerl says. "It's a legal grey area since it wasn't for download, it wasn't a finished product. We aren't sure who owns the recordings. I feel like I might survive this."

While I wish him—and the "anonymous online source" who leaked him the tracks—luck, I also hope that musicFIRST doesn't get wind of this guys' comments about the legality of streaming vs. downloading. Otherwise, he might be getting a lot of "funny" presents in the mail pretty soon.

UPDATE: Skwerl writes in: "Andy Greene at Rolling Stone took me a bit out of context. I told him that I was cooperating completely with the Feds, and that I was 100% ready and willing to face any legal repercussions my actions deserved. I suppose that wasn't a good enough story. He asked if I was freaked out, and that's where the closing quote come from. I said it 'may' be a legal gray area, not that it is. I admit that I don't know the law thoroughly, and have ruled nothing out at this point."

Guns N' Roses "Chinese Democracy" Leaker Gets FBI Visit [RS]
Earlier: "Chinese Democracy" Creeps Ever Closer To Actually Existing (Maybe)

Apparently this "give me some, and I'll give something away" tactic is being used to smoke out what a tipster referred to in e-mail as "known German and Portugese hoarders," who are rumored to have still-unreleased demos in their possession. There's an epic thread over at chinesedemocracy.com about one person in particular:

here's the latest that I'm hearing from my source. the iconito guy (guy offering $$ for a new leak at mygnr) has got a new song. maybe even more than one. supposedly he got a song and ended up paying $1,000 for it. rumor has it he got a 99 studio demo of chinese d, a new madagascar, and a new song that my source won't give up the title on. supposedly the new song is low quality and that's the reason the guy threw in the 99 demo of cd and a new madagascar (he didn't know how new, and says he hasn't heard anything himself with the exception of about 5 seconds of a new song and he swears it's legit with axl's vocals.

The debate over whether or not the guy's full of it goes on for another 13 pages, if you dare. I made it through about four before realizing that the fact that Universal hasn't made a lucrative bid to purchase chinesedemocracy.com as a sign that this album isn't coming out anytime soon.

Also: Did you know that Axl turns 50 in 2012? Just figured I'd point that out.

$1,000.00 For GN'R Chinese Democracy Demo [craigslist]
UPDATE ON THE RUMOR ABOUT THE GUY AT MYGNR (HE HAS A SONG) [chinesedemocracy.com]

"Lil Wayne said 'fuck mixtape DJ's'...so now i'm about to show that boy the meaning of bootleg...I'll be damned if I let [anyone] get away with saying fuck me without him facing some type of repercussions, including [him]."

He's also taken to his MySpace page:

I would have figured that he'd have at least put "The Carter III" somewhere on there, given that it was such a popular search term this weekend. How can you properly engage in a publicity stunt in 2008 without the right search-engine optimization tactics?

DJ Chuck T Claims Responsibility For Carter III Leak [HipHopDX]

The crackdown on pop blogs has been coming down the pike for a while—particularly in the case of Kevipod Music, which, while a great resource, was operated by a guy who tagged his ZShare uploads with his blog's name—and why it's happening with Carey's record, and not, say, Janet Jackson's (ooh, burn!) is probably because the un-Googleable E=MC² is the priority for Island Def Jam in the first half of the year. Mariah's last effort, The Emancipation of Mimi, sold more than five million copies and helped people forget about Glitter; thanks to Carey's wide appeal, the first week of E=MC²'s sales will be a true test of just how much the bottom has dropped out of the CD market, and whether or not its true depths have even been plumbed yet.

Oh, and in case you haven't heard the The-Dream-penned song—which is apparently about a sex tape?—a YouTube embed of it is below; it's a perfectly decent midtempo jam, although why R & B singers are all about sounding less like themselves and more like robotic sex dolls in 2008 is beyond me.

Blogger Madness [ALi's Blog]
Earlier: Mariah Carey Comes Down Hard On Music Blogger

We are a group of musicians who have downloaded newly leaked albums by popular artists, quickly recorded many subtle overdubs over the work, and then re-leaked it to the internet. We have done this for about three years now. We used all kinds of instruments with recording techniques that matched the audio quality of the album in question. We used a varied amount of re-leaking methods including but not limited to Soulseek, OiNK, The Pirate Bay, Limewire and zipped files hosted on sites like YouSendIt or Mediafire with links spread out on hundreds of message boards. Our turn over time was usually very small so often our version of the artist's album was online for download within hours of its original leak. If you illegally download music on the internet the chances that our work is in your collection is very, very likely! In fact, you might have a whole lot of us!

The reason? Surprisingly, it isn't self-promotion! Instead, it's a much more noble cause: Fucking with people. No, really!

[O]ne day, about 4 years ago, one of us downloaded a newly leaked album by a very popular band. Excitedly listening to it for the first time we noticed a very out of place death metal song in the middle of the album. The obvious genre change and the ability to check the track listing and run time for each song on a reliable website made it easy to sniff out that this leak had been tampered with. We discarded the leaked files and waited patiently for the actual release where upon we bought it in a store.

This got us thinking: what if this problem got more insidious, subtle, and widespread? What if there was a network of musicians who got a hold of albums right as they leaked, added subtle yet very much additional overdubs all over the album, and then re-leaked it to the internet? We imagined a scenario where someone would get in a car with their friend, he would put on the new _____ album, and you would say, "Where's all the piano parts?" to which the driver would say, "What piano parts? This album is all guitars and drums." Finally, you would scratch your head and say, "Not my copy!"

It would be bewildering.

It would be irksome.

It would be annoying.

We set out to make that specific bewildering, annoyance a possibility.

Man, if this is true—and not the initial step of some annoying viral Web Sheriff promotion (or even an RIAA thing, although they do take time out from their manifesto to LOL at MediaDefender)—these guys are my new heroes. Unfortunately they don't list their "accomplishments," although they do claim that they've performed this little trick with their own albums after they've seen them leaked on OiNK et al. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to who might be involved in this merry band of pranksters? Because I'd love to buy any/all of them a drink.

The Overdub Tampering Committee [overdubtampering.blogspot.com; HT Eric Harvey]

Discussed: Crummy CD sales possibly (but who knows) related to the rise of illegal downloading; what a torrent is, exactly; the rise and fall of OiNK; the minor fiasco relating to Ba Da Bing records accusing writer Erik Davis of leaking Beirut's Flying Cub Cup; the specious reasoning of full-time pirates; the specious lawsuits launched by the industry; the uncertainty over what leak culture means for the health of indie labels and bands; Radiohead!; the impossibility of stopping any of this.

Not discussed: The increasing trend toward indie bands and labels (anonymously) leaking their own records ahead of time to drum up publicity; larger labels "leaking" material to connected bloggers and key online locations to drum up publicity.

Things I will never understand after reading a million of these articles: the "Robin Hood"/"Johnny Appleseed" theories leakers have about their work bringing the music to teh people. (But let's not get into that again.)

Ripped To Shreds [New York]

I would like to close with a brief meditation on the spooky, SciFi aspect of all of this. By watermarking their advance CD, Ba Da Bing was hoping not only that they would make recipients too paranoid to upload, but that the object itself would do the threatening. The physical advance, not the publicist or the label head, is now attempting to renegotiate the time-honored and rather informal promotional contract between company and writer. Such renegotiations can be aggressive, and such aggression destroys the aura of chumminess that rules between publicist and writer. One of the reasons I fucked up is that the Beirut advance did not clearly announce itself as being watermarked—my name was printed on the CD, which I didn't even notice, and there was no further warning.

This is in stark contrast to the data grenade I recently got from Warner Brothers: a CD advance of Mark Knopfler's shitty new record, Kill to Get Crimson. This object is a pure, time capsule-worthy artifact of the copyright anxieties of the early twenty-first century. The cardboard sleeve is yellow and black and emblazoned with an enormous exclamation point, and features the following threat:

RESTRICTED RELEASE! WATERMARKED DISC! Do Not Copy - The Music on this CD Has Been Watermarked With a Unique Identifier that Allows Us to Identify the Intended Recipient (You) as the Source of Any Unauthorized Copies.

My favorite thing here is how the text creates an addressee through the bullying use of "us" and "you". The media organization announces that it is now an "us" acting like a data police force, and it then throws in the paranthetical second person "you" the way a cop shines a flashlight in your eyes. This "contract" creates a you that is already guilty. And you didn't even ask for this thing to show up at your door!

On the flip side of the CD, "you" also find the bullshit claim that by opening the package, you are agreeing to the fat paragraph of legalese plastered below. This language includes the hilarious proviso that the CD can only be listened to by the recipient—no girlfriends, no dogs, no neighbors. When you rip open the package, you discover that bad cop has been replaced with good cop by way of a final note: "Thank You for Agreeing to our Restricted Release Terms. Please Enjoy the Music!"

How is anyone supposed to enjoy music after such an Orwellian negotiation! It is as if, as the loss of the physical storage medium continues to undermine the economics of the record industry, the industry is using the object to fight back. It sends humble scribes packages that speak, that has powers of command, that can manipulate behavior and—if you dare to rip it open—even grant pleasure.

Moreover, the watermarked disc itself is, in some informational sense, alive, or at least virally infected with the digital ghost of my life. When I let that Beirut advance slip out of my hands, a little piece of me went with it, a chunk of virtual identity that I hadn't agreed for it to appropriate and that I didn't even know about. Instead of the old informal economy of circulating copies of music, I had become enmeshed in an emerging and far more claustrophobic world of endless virtual contracts and licenses, a world where objects command and the turn against you, where music has become data, and enjoyment little more than the processing thereof.

In a way, this whole "digital ghost" idea is pretty apt, if kind of spooky; I've seen CDs marked with familiar bylines in pretty much every used-CD emporium I've been to (some even in the shrink wrap, ouch!). Is watermarking CDs really an act of intimidation? Perhaps; I know that when I see my name printed on an advance that I get in the mail, it simultaneously makes me feel a little excited about the album (it's important if it has to get protected, right?) and worried (OH NO HACKERS). But both leak culture and the lousy position that the music business is in are making writers and people who put out music more suspicious of each other, and not in the good "if your mother says she loves you, check it out" way. I still am pretty firm in my belief that the only way to solve this problem is to get rid of the idea of the long-lead advance—for bands like Beirut in particular, where so much of the demographic is Internet-savvy and more likely to pick up a band based on a Pitchfork review than a Blender writeup. But that's an old habit that isn't likely to be broken anytime soon, which means that we'll probably have to hear about stories like this for at least another year or so.

My Data Crime [Techgnosis, via Boing Boing]

according to my source, right before 50 threw the phone out the window, he yelled you're f-ing everything up, youre messing up my look, my album, so you know what, I'm on f-in vacation now. F- you and F- Interscope......
Wow....
Here's the inside story. Allegedly someone inside the Interscope camp is about to lose their job or their head because a video of 50's 3rd single, called "Follow my Lead" featuring Robin Thicke just leaked to the web. Mind you, this single isn't supposed to come out until October....after 50's album drops and after his Justin Timberlake collabo dies out. But now 50's carefully laid plan is all messed up and when he found out about the leak he flipped so crazy that told the head of Interscope that he's boycotting all promo all media and possibly leaving the label... right now? Less than a month before the album drops?
But obviously its retarded to have both the 50/Justin song out and the 50/Robin song out at the same time. Plus, how you gonna have a video out for a song that isnt even out yet? No wonder 50 went bonkers.

According to G-unit sources, 50 said F- Interscope and broke out without a trace. And I just saw a photo of the plasma ripped off the wall.

So what's going on at Interscope? Is there someone working there who just really wants to see Curtis flop, by any means necessary? Or did someone actually leak "Follow My Lead" out of panic—"Ayo Technology" hasn't yet cracked the hip-hop charts or the Billboard 100, although "I Get Money" is slowly climbing the Hot R & B/Hip-Hop Songs chart (it's at No. 39, up from No. 49)—and jump the gun, hastily releasing a song where 50 co-stars with someone who's recognizable to mainstream pop fans?

The timing for all this is even more curious, given that yesterday, 50 said in an interview with SOHH that "If Kanye West sells more records than 50 Cent on September 11, I'll no longer write music. I'll write music and work with my other artists, but I won't put out any more solo albums." (The soundbite even got picked up by Rush & Molloy.) Maybe someone took that statement as a threat and a promise, and decided to speed along the process toward relegating 50 to the CEO's office. Or maybe this is all a stunt within a stunt within a stunt! Because 50's vow of press silence aside, I have a feeling that there is no way this is over, what with there still being 32 days until Sept. 11 and the amount of schadenfreude he's built up.

Miss Info Exclusive....50 Cent wilds out on Interscope [MissInfo.TV]
50 Cent - Follow My Lead (Ft. Robin Thicke) [Official Video] [YouTube]

Days of the Leak [Spin]

Hi,

Instead of doing what everyone else has done and create a blog to leak music to people ahead of release dates illegally, I thought (largely since I work in the industry and people's lack of care or respect for the hard work artists and the people who put out records appals me) I'd create a little blog to post the names, indelible and set out for all to see, of those people who've been given the care of having an early copy of a release and have set that responsibility aside and leaked the record they were entrusted with.

I feel perhaps a bit vindictive doing this, but on the other hand, the lack of care brought to the table by the other parties whose names will be listed here is more than grossly inappropriate.

Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.

We're not sure how exactly the proprietor is going to get these names—from his other blog, we find out that he lives in Ann Arbor and travels around to festivals "for work"—and we're especially not sure that, now that he's been linked from more than a few music-writer hangouts, he'll actually go through with this project. But then again, that suspense will probably be great for his traffic!

Thou Shall Not Leak [thoushallnotleak.blogspot.com]

But a bigger question was left practically untouched: why would a major commercial radio station resort to playing pirated MP3s in the first place?

"It's hard to be the leader in new music," says Spike. "Say a record leaks and kids are passing it around on the Internet for two weeks. [Record labels] still want me to talk about the world premiere broadcast I'm gonna do. And you wonder why people listening to the radio don't think of us as a source of new music anymore. They're getting it before we are."

Listening habits have changed dramatically in recent years, due in part to the rise of on-demand media and the popularity of products like the iPod, which allow people to choose not only what they consume but when they consume it. Satellite radio networks XM and Sirius both offer upwards of 200 commercial-free channels, and there are countless Internet radio stations and podcasts catering to even the most esoteric niches. If none of those options suits you, and you don't have any qualms about copyright infringement, downloading music illegally has never been easier.

The entire radio industry is struggling to adapt, but for stations like Q101, geared toward audiences between the ages of 18 and 34, it's an even bigger challenge. "Alternative is under an immense amount of pressure at this point," says Fred Jacobs, president of Jacobs Media, a nationwide consulting firm that helped popularize the classic-rock format in the mid-80s and advises both Q101 and its sister station, the Loop 97.9. "The Gen-Y audience in particular has a tremendous amount of media and tech options available to them. When it comes to the use of FM radio as the primary medium for exposure to new music, those numbers are lower for alternative than for mainstream rock or classic rock. I mean, it's still the number one source by a long shot, but a lot of other factors are coming into play: everything from social networking sites to iTunes to sites like Rhapsody."

If anything, Q101—which has as its current slogan the unwieldy phrase "Everything alternative, now on shuffle"—was probably hoping for one other outcome: gaining in alternative rebel-cred what it's lost in the possibility of an exclusive White Stripes interview. After this kerfuffle, which garnered the station a lot of attention, Q101 can now tell prospective listeners that it loves music so much, it's willing to risk the wrath of Jack White to prove it. Of course, proof of the station's love for music would probably be better provided by not having warmed-over bands from 2001 comprise the lineup for their signature show of the summer, but that move probably wouldn't get nearly as much ink.

Why Play Leaks? [Chicago Reader]

Art Brut - Direct Hit [MP3, link expired]

Yesterday, you might have heard rumors about a Volta leak through UK iTunes, but nothing actually came of it. I wrote it off as a prank, to be honest. But now, rumors are flying around again, and it appears that Volta actually was available on UK iTunes late from Monday night to early Tuesday morning, a full two weeks before it's [sic!!!] actual release date.

The leak actually sounds pretty crummy, with a few the files skipping thanks to their being flipped from AAC to MP3. We're pretty sure that Björk's music needs the higher fidelity to be fully appreciated, but our recent obsession with all things DRM-related is making us wonder if this mix-up—which echoes the Arcade Fire "leak" that happened earlier this year—will be used as major-label leverage to clamp down digital protection on its iTunes-sold files. We can hear the majors' arguments now: "Think of it as a technological protection against human error!" Not to mention a way to keep the status quo intact, which suits the record biz just fine.

Volta Leaked . . . On iTunes [Shameless Complacency]

From an interview with Australia's X-Press Online:

The album streamed on the web. Does it concern you that people will end up with copies of the album months before it is officially released?
Not at all. That is how things are going to be. If people are that excited about it that they are going to get the software, figure out how to record it and trade it amongst themselves then I think that is great, they are enthusiastic about it.

I have said it before, it's absolutely true... I have met countless people at shows who have confessed that they have downloaded our records illegally - or burned copies instead of buying it - and then you see them at a show and they have bought tickets to the show and they are going to buy the older records or t-shirts or whatever. They are supporting the band and for me - and for all of us - it is way more important for the music to be heard than for us to get a little money off of every CD. The reason we make it is for people to enjoy it and for people to relate to it, so that doesn't bother me at all. I think that people who resist that are kidding themselves and that is the way that it is going to be in the future.

It's nice to hear a band embrace the technology and not kick against it or fear it.

It is not even the technology for me. You make music, you want people to hear it, you know? If they can't afford it and want to check it out, I don't care if they buy it or not.

Granted, Wilco is is a thirteen-year-old band with six albums, a documentary and a giant touring fanbase, so it makes sense that Kotche isn't going to sweat it if some kid in Pittsburgh rips a copy of Sky Blue Sky and never winds up paying for it. But at least he recognizes that the main reason people scour torrent sites and ping around YouSendIt files for an advance album is because they actually want to hear the music, not because they want to hustle CDRs down at the Fulton Mall. And even though Sky is pretty much everywhere at this point, we're pretty certain it will have a nice first-week debut. Heck, we might even buy a copy. Well, probably not. But maybe!

WILCO'S GLENN KOTCHE Drummerteeth [X-Press Online]

Kris Gillespie, who manages Domino Records, says leaking wasn't out of the question for his label, the home of the rockers Franz Ferdinand and indie buzzmakers the Arctic Monkeys. "We were seriously considering leaking tracks," Gillespie says of the latest Franz Ferdinand album, "because the watermarks and copy protection were almost doing too good a job."

Gillespie says he checks peer-to-peer trading sites every day to see if the new Arctic Monkeys album has leaked, "but more out of curiosity than out of vigilance," he notes.

With the formation of this new Internet-industrial complex, the absence of music trading can signal serious problems. "If no one's bothered leaking the album the week before the release date, the fear would be that no one cares," says Brendan Bourke, of the music publicity firm TagTeam. "When you're getting within a few weeks of a release, you want people to start talking about it. It almost behooves you to leak."

To which we say, "Behoove away! Especially if you're behooving the new White Stripes or R. Kelly discs." But these comments reinforce what we were saying before—namely, that bands that have come of age in the Internet era, leaks can only be a good thing: They can get the songs to the fans (some of whom are going to buy the damn thing anyway), and use those fans' response to build momentum. So let the floodgates open and the FLAC files fly.

Music labels spring leaks - for publicity [Christian Science Monitor]

(Ed. note: To see a photo for which we spent twenty minutes trying to come up with a Louis Leakey/Arctic Monkeys joke, click here)

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.

Thanks to a mix-up at Merge Records, there's a new Arcade Fire MP3 making the rounds—but not many people have posted it yet. Here's why: The group's lead-off single, "Intervention," was earmarked as a charity single on the iTunes store—but as it turns out, someone at the band's record label sent the wrong track, and now "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations" has been let loose on the web (lead singer Win Butler explains the situation here; you can also read about it here and here).

According to searches on the Hype Machine and elbo.ws, nobody's put the song up yet—probably because putting a fund-raising single online for free strikes even the most unscrupulous blogger as rather dickish, especially two days after Christmas (as long as the music blogosphere is made up mostly of indie-rock nerds, expect plenty of moral equivocation when it comes to leaks). Besides, at this point, everyone's just waiting for the whole damn album to be unleashed.

Earlier: The New Arcade Fire Song: Now You Hear It, Now You Don't

Sunday's Chicago Tribune piece on leaks of unreleased albums canvassed indie-label employees about their thoughts on leaks, including a rep from Sub Pop:

"I don't think we're plagued with the same problems that major labels are as far as the dangers of leaking, nor do I necessarily agree with their view or tactics," says Tony Kiewel, head of A&R at Sub Pop Records, a veteran label whose laid-back approach and grounded, non-commercial attitude helped usher in the hands-off, artist-friendly tactics now commonplace in the indie sector. The Seattle imprint sends discs to journalists months before release dates in hopes of generating buzz.

Kiewel is aware that some choose to sell their copies or digitally post them but doesn't think costly initiatives that diminish playback options are the answer, particularly when his bands depend on word-of-mouth exposure.

"We're sending the writer a CD in hopes that [they] will play it and listen to it in whatever capacity they're most likely to enjoy it. So making it super-limited only seems to hurt their experience and probably hurt the artist's ability to get a good review, which we're not eager to see happen," he explains. "I'm not really concerned about [music leaking] pinching sales. I don't necessarily believe that's what happens when music leaks early."

Not mentioned in this article is the mini-uproar from a few months ago, when a low-bitrate version of Wincing The Night Away, the forthcoming album by the Shins, made its way around the Internet; promotional copies of that CD were watermarked, a first for Sub Pop. And when those MP3s made their way around blogs, Sub Pop turned to the UK copyright enforcers at Web Sheriff to have them taken down. Perhaps Kiewel mentioned this incident to Tribune reporter Bob Gendron, but he neglected to mention it—which seems curious to us, especially given that the tactics Sub Pop took with the Shins, one of the few bands on the label that are high-profile enough to snag a Saturday Night Live slot, directly contradict Kiewel's "hands-off" spin. Has Sub Pop decided, after October's tempest, to let leaks flow more freely?

Leaks of new songs difficult to plug — and some in industry don't care [Chicago Tribune]
Earlier: The Shins Hit The Fans, Sub Pop Calls In The Sheriff

That said, it is a new song featuring R. Kelly, and we love the nutty Sexosaurus, so we'd probably be writing about it even if it hadn't landed in our inbox. We're such pawns! But at least with R.K. in the background, we feel like pawns wearing expensive silk pajamas.

Young Jeezy feat. R. Kelly - Go Getta (Clean) [MP3, link removed]

Yet despite Sub Pop's efforts, the album—in the form of low-bitrate MP3s—made its way around peer-to-peer sites and MP3 blogs.

The leak puts Sub Pop in an admittedly awkward position—how can it stoke the hype for Wincing while still clamping down on MP3-swapping? First, they put the Web Sheriff, a UK-based company that touts itself as "Europe's leading Internet policing specialist," on the case. Web Sheriff serves as an intermediary between copyright holders and copyright-busters, and it also cracks down on paparazzi shots and nasty rumors. (Thepunkguy posted the pre-emptive missive sent to bloggers by Web Sheriff, and it looks like pretty standard stuff, if a little laden with thanks and regards.)

The watermarked advances also help explain the leak's subpar audio quality. The files are likely transcodes—the digital equivalent of recording a file, then recording that recording, in an attempt to strip any identifying details, like a watermark. So the MP3s that did get out were grainy—and we suspect that most Shins fans are rabid enough that they'll hold out for higher-bitrate versions of the tracks. This could be, in a way, a case for watermarking records—although betting that all fans of every band are FLAC devotees seems like a bit of a large bet to make, and watermarking-gone-wrong can result in a reviewer's CD only being playable on a boom box from 1991.

The most obvious way that Sub Pop can minimize the leak's effect is also the least practical one, at least from a financial standpoint—closing the window between promo-dissemination and retail availability by moving up the album's release date. Since Wincing is coming out in the first quarter of 2007, and that begins in January, rearranging the label's schedule to release it earlier would be a pain in the ass. But as we watch more and more pre-releases make their way into the BitTorrent netherworld, we're starting to wonder if the whole promo-release cycle shouldn't be shortened considerably—even if it means that magazines, which have much longer lead times than, say, Pitchfork, get the shorter end of the stick. Whether or not 150 words and a few stars from Blender are too much of a sacrifice for labels to make, though, may prove to be the sticking point that keeps leaks like this sprouting for a while.

Wincing The Night Away Watercooler [Stereogum]
Previously: The Shins Hit The Fans...Sort Of

Our suggestion: If you want to listen to the Shins this weekend, root around the BitTorrent sites, or just go to any bar that caters to twentysomething and thirtysomething yuppies.

Track Review: The Shins - "A Comet Appears" [Prefix]

Amerie - That's What You Are [MP3, link removed]
New Songs/Oct. 17th [Beauty N The Beat]