What A Leak Can Do – Jay-Z’s New Record Has A Half A Million Pirated Files Out There

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Does that mean the record has gone silicon (Bah-Dum-Crash)? Reports are that there is 400K+ files on BitTorrent and another 100K+ being shared over filesharing sites, Usenet, and AIM. In a smart move the release of Jay’s new record was pushed up to today. The question I wonder is if there was a way to get releases on iTunes and other digital outlets the second they leaked, would a lot of this go away? Would fans buy if it was available to them the first second it was available? If only iTunes would facilitate this!

Jesse Cannon is the editor of Musformation. He produces records at his studio Cannon Found Soundation. Follow him on Twitter at @JesseCannonMusF. For more info please visit his website.

  • Paolo

    My feeling is yes, a fast digital release will make the problem shrink. The real question for me is has the artist built a personal relationship with their fans ?
    Those without a relationship can kiss sales goodbye!
    Shakira has strong ties with her fans, as careful artists elsewhere. Shakira didn’t think twice about releasing She Wolf as a free promo download alongside paid download. Any losses were cheap promo against those buying the album.
    Taylor Swift also has built a massive personal relationship with her fans. I find it very interesting that the second Taylor announced “Fearless Deluxe” +6 extra tracks & videos a few days ago that the takedown dogs were released.
    The six new tracks, live versions of which had been on YouTube etc for up to 2+years have been subject to immediate takedown notices.
    I interpret this to support my thoughts that *real* fans will buy “Fearless Deluxe” for the extra tracks that they don’t already own, even with already having home copies borrowed from YTube. Someone somewhere seems to think that it’s worthwhile & important to scrub access to old material against download by new interested buyers.
    Personally I think the scrubbing could be pointless, the performances removed were not high quality & deprive those fans who didn’t take home copies of access to long favourite tracks.
    If the takedown is due to the worry that early version lyrics & poor live recordings might put off new buyers, I think the attack dogs are whoofing the wrong tree.