We’ve received about 234 e-mails regarding the sorta-leak of the White Stripes’ Icky Thump that happened last night–yesterday, a Chicago DJ named Electra played the record in its entirety, and some enterprising soul with a really crummy signal decided to tape it off of his radio and turn it into MP3s. (We’ve listened to them, and trust us: The songs are good, but unless you really, really want to get vaguely nauseated by the bottom-of-the-barrel fidelity of the files, you’re best off passing on the Sendspace links.)
Anyway, word of Icky Thump‘s escape from pre-release embargoland reached Jack White–who was all the way in Spain–pretty quickly, and instead of sending the Web Sheriff after Electra, he rang up the station. She recounted the tale on her blog:
At 4pm today, Jack White called Q101′s main offices from Spain, where they’re touring, looking specifically for me, to yell at ME for leaking the album and, in part, being “messed up for the entire (music) business.” (Edit – I listened to the call again today, and I apologize for initially misquoting Jack.) I felt like I was going to throw up. Weirdest, most surreal conversation of my life.
Jack asked me to take responsibility for leaking the record, and asked if I was sorry for what I’d done. S&T both jumped into the call – I was clearly flustered – and backed me 100%. We tried to explain where we were coming from – someone gave us a copy of a record that we were really excited to play, and the whole experience was an hour-long lovefest for him and his band – but he wasn’t having it. He hung up, very, very angry, and I thought I was going to cry. Instead, I drank some beers that the Fix had left in the studio. Room temperature Bud Light. Delicious.
After speaking to Jack’s manager and getting their side of the story, Spike and I went on the air with S&T to open up the situation to the listeners. We respected Jack’s desire not to be on the air and didn’t re-air the call, but we talked about what was said and what happened. I’m extremely grateful to everyone who called in supporting us. I don’t think I did anything wrong, and I don’t think I am helping to ruin the music industry. I think I made people excited for the new White Stripes record. I know that was our intention.
A noble explanation, and really, one that may have flown in the pre-download era. But now? Considering that the radio-to-radio-rip process is lightning-fast, “enthusiasm” like Electra’s is rarely contained to a moment in time, or even a geographical area. And the fact that the songs sound like they’re coming out of a tin can probably makes the circulated leak even more annoying for White, who gave his recording process a slight upgrade on this album. (Who knows? Maybe the crummy fidelity will make people want to buy the record–okay, okay, we’re being naive.)
So Does This Make Me A Pimp and a Prostitute Too? [electra: queen of snark, via Web Vomit]
Kinda reminds me a bit about how 35 years ago or so a couple of Detroit DJs got to play an original mix of Raw Power on the air courtesy of the band — but everyone knew that said recording was barely going to circulate if at all. Electra is the naive one here.
There’s no right on wrong here. The whole conflict is actually a compelling anecdote about how the industry has changed. What would have once been considered promotion is now a liability for the artist.
Ticket sales and tour merch, Jack. What can you say.
Did jack really expect huge sales anyways in light of the P2P situation being what it is?
It is ridiculous to blame radio for the 800 lb. gorilla sitting in his living room.
Fuck that guy.
Don’t most artists wish they could have a radio station interested enough in their music to actually play their music? Because radio stations playing your music translates into people buying it?
It’s not as if the album is gonna sell a ton of copies anyway. It’s not radio music. When somebody doesn’t pay for the album he loses pennies. He already knows that it’s the red shirts and sell out shows that pay for all those rhinestones.
How could anyone stand behind this DJ? She leaked pre-release NON-PROMO material on to the radio. Does her station have advertising on it? Are they making money by airing a stolen, leaked copy of a future release? Just because a friend gives you something doesn’t make it legal for you to do what you want with it. Receiving stolen property is still a crime as far as I can tell.
I don’t like the situation either, but cmon, use some common sense. She didn’t think anyone would get mad at her for doing that? Ignorance and naivete have never been good excuses.
personally, i’d be more peeved at the dude/dudette who uploaded the butt-crumby files onto p2ps.
you can’t stop illegal downloading, but do you really think you’re doing anybody a service or duty by “delivering” p.o.s. files for all to consume? exercise some restraint, people. is this a race? is this an exercise in collecting or just simply accumulating?
as for electra, the fan card only takes her so far. sure, it wasn’t her “intention” to get low-quality sound recordings of an album she acquired out there — her “intention” was to support the band, blah blah blah –but why didn’t she spin it when it was sent to her? maybe there’s a reason for add dates or promo copies or what-have-you… i’m sure warner bros. and co. are just as interested in getting people “excited” for the album and maybe there’s a reason (beyond the 800 lb. gorrilla) that they don’t send out albums they day they get finished out to radio stations and publications and retailers.
the station/dj has to admit some self-interest in jumping the gun, to hype playing a much-hyped album in its entirety because it earns you an audience or cred or whatever… and they got caught.
I’ve always thought of Jack as a even-tempered guy.
DJs are indeed idiots.
I won’t be buying the new White Stripes album precisely because of Jack White’s reaction. I own the others but I will take a pass on this one.
Its funny to compare his reaction to a band like Wilco, who has been broadcasting it album on its website for months with no appearent effect on album sales. Nice to see that some bands get it, even if Jack White doesn’t. Frankly I am really surprised by him.
T
The quality is pretty shit, but Rag & Bone might just be worth it.
DJ- probably had best intentions. Not everyone is a web savvy pundit with hindsight, and we can’t assume she is.
Jack White- Complete over-reaction. The business of selling shiny discs is ending, and anyone who is seen taking the side of “the man” is going to be mis-trusted when someone younger and smarter than us figures out the new paradigm. Even Marilyn Manson is streaming his new record pre-release and it is pretty awful! That’s a time when it is in your best interest to make someone buy the metaphorical cow first!
Notwithstanding his flying off the handle, I’m mostly with Jack on this one.
a) There’s a difference between playing a leaked single (common, mostly harmless) and playing a whole album.
b) Even in the days (’60s/’70s) when early free-form FM/AOR stations played whole album sides, they generally didn’t do it with albums that hadn’t been released yet.
c) Wanting radio to play/promote your album (cf. heyzeus, above) is not the same as tolerating them playing the whole thing in one go, at shitty fidelity, weeks before it drops.
d) As KingHater said – the business is way, way too different now to feign ignorance on what such an act is going to do in cyberspace.
I have a modicum of sympathy for the DJ – I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of a Jack hissy-fit – and I wouldn’t say this is a firing offense. But she really screwed the pooch on this one and deserved the reprimand.
Boo hoo, Electra. Give me a fucking break. I hardly feel any sympathy for you and am completely on Jack’s side here. Yes, the physical disc industry is dying—big time. No surprises there. Not to sound like an absolute dinosaur (’cause I’m not), but technology = immediate. It would be completely different if they allowed their album to be streamed or played in full (via radio)—but they didn’t. Also, I’m not really a big Jack White fan or anything, but he’s probably pissed that the new album’s first listen is going to sound really, really shitty on a tape recorded from a radio converted into a low-quality mp3.
Ugh. They’re making more music? Can’t they just, you know, stop?
Please?
@Rory B. Bellows:
@noamjamski:
With respect, I think you guys are mixing apples and oranges here.
What makes Wilco cool in their approach to leaks is their understanding that they can’t control cyberspace and, specifically, their fans. For all we know, Jack White might have similar attitudes, of the I-don’t-like-it-but-they’re-gonna-do-what-they’re-gonna-do variety. (To be fair, I think we all know Jack is a control freak and not nearly as laid-back as Jeff Tweedy. But that’s beside the point.)
But: that expectation, that fans will rip and share your recordings, is WAY different from expecting radio stations to play by the rules and not facilitate the ripping. Yeah, radio is too corporate nowadays, never takes risks, blah-blah-blah; but there’s taking a risk and then there’s being grossly negligent.
Again, if we were talking here about a leak of the next White Stripes single, I’m fairly sure Jack White wouldn’t be getting on a phone from Spain to bitch someone out.
As everyone knows, radio is a medium in decline. In order to attract and retain listeners, stations HAVE to offer up songs that are different versions (live, in studio) or currently unavailable to the general public/not being played on other stations. Is it naive to think that the listening audience won’t rip it? Probably. But I still don’t think that radio is to blame for the state of the music industry today.
Many bands use the internet and P2P to their advantage. Artic Monkeys come to mind and Wilco as stated above is another great example. You can find a way to work with it and hope for success or you can sit back, let it happen and then point the finger in the aftermath.
@puffermedia
“I’ve always thought of Jack as a even-tempered guy.”
I hope that was sarcasm. Anyone who saw Jack beat the hell out of Jason Stollsteimer (Von Bondies) a few years ago would beg to differ.
Jack has always taken himself WAY too seriously.
I would never NOT buy Icky Thump because I could download a version that was cassette-taped off the radio, but now I’m half-inclined to side with Rory B. Bellows and not buy the record because JW was such a d-bag. He obviously doesn’t want me or anyone to hear it; it must be too epic for our pedestrian ears.
We spend a lot of time ripping the RIAA for this kind of fan-hating. We shouldn’t ignore the fact that the artist can be just as guilty.
Not everyone is a web savvy pundit with hindsight, and we can’t assume she is.
My counterargument is if that is so, then someone at the station in charge of any sort of training seems to have forgotten to mention the concept of radio-broadcast mp3s to their staff.
@dennisobell: I’m not sure I see your point. Are you saying that JW has the right to be pissed because its a radio station/corporation that played his music early vs. a random blogger/fan that found it on the internet? Why does the size of the entity matter? Either its wrong to play music you didn’t buy in advance of the official release date, or its not. I personally think that it not inherently wrong. The artists that I want to support are the ones that recognize that their music is going to get out in a variety of media and adjust themselves accordingly.
@dennisobell: I don’t think it is necessarily apples and oranges. If the conceit is that in this modern world the DJ should have known playing a promo in its entirety (and from everything I’ve read this was a legit promo, the only issue was that the whole record was played?) is appropriate in these internet savvy days, then Jack White should have known making an international phone call to yell at the DJ would also be incredibly public and create a backlash. I just think every artist needs to take stock in how and why they are successful. Backing the stance of a traditional record label by telling her she is “messing up” the music business is not endearing to your fans. It just makes you look like an asshole. There were ways to deal wit h the issue that wouldn’t be so alienating. He now looks like a megalomaniac.
It doesn’t matter whether “the game has changed” or if “people have to get on with the times”. One thing is to observe the music industry and the challenges it’s facing, and how it fails to overcome them at the expense of the consumers, and another is to expect an artist not to get angry when a radio DJ plays an entire, illegal, non-promo material copy of his latest album. An album that he’s currently taking the trouble to promote with gigs on the other side of the ocean.
I think it’s not loyal to do this, and I think that the artists should have a little bit of a say in the ways they don’t want their album promoted at least. Because when the big companies force you to sell your soul to promote your album it’s so very bad, isn’t it? I guess not so much when it’s a radio DJ that illegally releases your work out to the public without your consent.
@noamjamski: I do agree with you that Jack could and should have counted to 10 before making that phone call. PR, whether he likes it or not, is an important part of making rock fans like you. Artists should, wherever possible, try to behave above the fray.
That said, I remain sympathetic to him – a leak on that scale, even in the year 2007, would piss me off, too.
@Rory B. Bellows: That’s exactly what I’m saying, and yes, the size of the entity does matter. It’s accepting what the broad populace will do, versus expecting corporate entities to behave with some reasonable standards of ethics; after all, radio stations are all bitching about intellectual property rights, too.
she should have just played the first minute of each song, thus not ruining the whole thing, and allowing people to get an idea of the album.
still great for fans, less annoying to jack.
but what do i know, i’m on the internet.
I was listening to q101 last night when this went down, and I remember thinking that it was just a publicity stunt for the album, a la Nine Inch Nails. Right before NIN’s album came out, one of the q101 DJs “leaked” a track, supposedly infuriating the record company, who supposedly forbade the station from playing any NIN music, ever again. The station turned it into this big fuck you, playing a bunch of new NIN tracks. Of course, this was all clearly tied in with Trent Reznor’s crazy-ass viral marketing for the album, and q101 is still playing plenty of NIN.
The fact that Jack White himself supposedly called in makes the whole thing seem slightly more legit, though I’m still tempted to call shennanigans.
This begs the question: Why are artists and labels still belching out so many promo CD copies?
Promo copies lead to all this early ripping business, people pass them around like fruitcakes at Christmas, and they litter the used CD bins at stores like Amoeba, often unopened even before the albums’ official release dates. Often time, the people I encounter with promo copies aren’t music critics, journalists, or people in any position to purchase music licenses; they’re simply friends of people in the industry or those who have bought a copy from a used CD store. In the digital age and with secure FTP sites, promo CDs are really unnecessary.
Many bands have circumvented the promo copy process with success (Radiohead springs immediately to mind), so why not stop giving away this precious music for free? That would solve a whole lot of these problems, it seems.
@puffermedia: yeah he was pretty even tempered when he beat the shit out the von bondies guy.
I think its crazy how mad Jack White got. The quality is bad enough to NOT hard Sales, all this leak did was start tons of hype around “Icky Thump”
Anyway, I don’t think Electra’s intention was to leak the album, but to SHARE it more than anything.
She was just excited and wanted to play it. Hell, I know I wanted to share it as soon as I got my hand’s on it.
http://whudahexup.com/
@Xenu: Dude, I completely agree with you. On a possibly unrelated note, but perhaps not because I think it speaks well to the excesses of the industry I share my quarters at the Idolator flophouse with another critic, and this morning, UPS arrived with two packages for him, both from the same publicist at Warner Music.
One contained a Flaming Lips DVD, another the soundtrack to Ocean’s 13. ?!
Before things close up shop for Thursday, I just want to offer my agreement with dennisobell on this. The radio station was in the wrong on this front, precisely because they’re a big corporate entity. As was pointed out earlier in this thread, the station is a for-profit entity: the fan who taped the radio show may be geeky, pockmarked, and generally anti-social, but he’s not making money off of it.
I didn’t hear the recording, but I’m pretty sure that the station paused every song or two for a word from sponsors. That alone makes them the scumbags in this case.
As for those who are saying that they won’t buy Icky Thump because of this: you may want to search the somethingawful.com archives for their article about world of warcraft fanboys. Enlightening.
blame whoever gave the record to the dj, should be pretty easy to figure out
I’m gonna sound a dissenting note on the all-digital promos. It’s terrific for your White Stripes, your Wilcos. Not so good for crap band on unknown label I don’t necessarily want clogging my hard drive. Often it’s three tracks, shake head, toss in trash. That’s what CDs were MADE for.
@kiteless: yes, precisely. I’m sorry, Jack is completely right on this one. He possibly should’ve chilled out a little bit, but this DJ is an idiot. Playing two songs back to back is showing love for a band – playing an entire album, before its release or not, is just plain stupid, not to mention lazy.
Why does no one question how the hell Jack White – who was suppose to be in Spain – found out in a matter of about an hour that some station in Chicago was playing his album? I think it smells like Hype to me.
@TriedandTrue: This actually didn’t surprise me, what with us living in a BlackBerry world and all. Hell, Kanye West recorded and released an entire mix tape in a 12-hour span.
I’ll cast another vote that this is somewhat transparent PR stunt. Q101 did the exact same thing a few months back with the new NIN tracks, and got national media attention out of it….more publcity then they’ve had in years. Vaguely sad to see they apparently are getting it again this time. Look for them to milk it for days just like they did then. Fool me once…..
@RepentTokyo: I was indeed being facetious. Really, how clueless is this DJ that she’s shocked that Jack White is not one to take things lightly? Her claim of innocence is somewhat suspect. Chances are she thought she might annoy some middling industry hack.
While I completely agree with Xenu, I’ll go further and say the whole notion of a release date is going to need to be rethought. With all the possible points-of-exit for leaks there’s no way to stem the tide. I think just putting it out in a raw form in advance of manufacturing and thus maintaining some level of control over your “product” is most sensible approach at present.
@Halfwit: Sorry, I just don’t buy that it matters that this is a for-profit enterprise. I mean, Jack White is pissed (if he really is pissed) because he is worried about how it will affect his profits. Just because someone is trying to make some money off of something, doesn’t necessarily make them evil. Idolator is for profit and is posting advance copies of songs all them time. Are you calling our favorite editors evil?
My take continues to be that artists should embrace the release of their material. Its inevitable that it is going to get out, either from fans or media, and getting all pissy about it only makes them look like a douche.
So, if this was fake, you could say that the Stripes are embracing leaks and using it to promote the new album. Their mistake though was getting the talent involved. Had the studio suits called the radio station, it has the same result but keeps the taint off the Stripes. Because JW calls, he looks out of touch and like a jerk. At least, in my opinion he does.
I live in Chicago, and I listen to Q101 all the time and I heard this. Im standing behind electra on this one. Not only is she my favorite DJ in the post-Fook Q101 now, she’s always out to do good in the music world. She’s always said to support the industry and buy albums. She’s a huge NIN who played Year Zero early and trent Reznor even approved of it. Last week they played the entire new Marilyn Manson album which isnt even due out until July. A few weeks ago they played another full Album. q101 does it alot and they never have problems with it. I dont know why Jack blew up on this. yay Electra and Yay Q101
It seems Jack White is more angry about the fact the the suprise was spoiled rather then the money side of things. I think the DJ has made the story suit her though and try to make us sympathetic ’cause of saying she was scared and gunna throw up ect. It was a shitty thing to do, sneak his record on air when he had it planned and was already treating fans to songs off it. I respect Jack emotion about it 100% but it didn’t stop me finding some downloads of my own. AMMMMMMMMMMMAZING ALBUM!!!!
Icky Thump available here. Go please now and listen. Think not of this as you do it. Think only of me, and my MTV-incompatable Mac. Shed a silent tear. Then forget all about me and enjoy Stripey goodness.
Tenno is right on the money. Imagine if NBC played the Spider-Man 3 Movie as a “love fest” for Raimi and the gang. That shit wouldn’t fly and you know it. Why is it different just because it’s music? Jack was perfectly justified.
P.S. – And Jack White is not “pissed because it eats into his profits.” Jack White is pissed because it’s a rotten thing to do to someone who worked on something they created. Someone like that doesn’t put profits above his expression. He’s not a gangster rapper.
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