Idolator

Winner. Sight unseen.

A historical piece would be a great complement to this. What was the first 'big' album leak? I most commonly hear about Kid A in 2000 but (believe it or not) there was a fair amount of interest in a late 1999 leak -- Oasis's Standing on the Shoulders of Giants. (Like I said, believe it or not, and Kid A unquestionably got more attention later.)

Damn! So I'm going to have to wait until mid-Decemb... I mean Christmas to hear that new Postal Service album?

Good article. My favorite quote has to be "It's only gonna hurt you if your record sucks" from the Merge publicist. I wonder if the major labels will ever realize that leaks or no leaks, people aren't going to buy their albums if they continually suck. It's not that complicated. People like music. If you give them something worth buying, there will be people out there who want to buy it.

"OiNK is accessible strictly by invitation, meticulous about the quality of the files its members offer, and quick to bounce patrons who don't abide by its stringent rules, which demand that members upload as much as they download. And for the anonymous and secretive founders of the site, the first rule of OiNK is: You do not talk about OiNK."

Right. Gotcha. So I won't ask then why two recent albums -- def. not the one mentioned in the article's intro nor the soon-to-be-released effort by Ms. Arulpragasm -- were leaked to OiNK but then fastidiously nuked by the admins.

@Ned Raggett: Its Standing on the Shoulder of Giants.
I'd heard that it was Kid A, I was also under the impression that the leak was official.

i read a retraction of that postal service date in another article. apparently his Christmas release date for a new postal service record was given as an example and wasn't a real release date. or maybe thats just what they are telling us and Christmas day it will appear in stores unannounced bundled with chinese democracy.

@pjohn: Regardless, knowing how leaks work with Sub Pop, I expect to be listening to the new Postal Service by the end of August.

Wolk's new book on comics is strong, but it doesn't come close to the impact or scope of Scott McCloud's seminal "Understanding Comics." Wolk did a pretty great job with his leak piece, although it's pretty obvious that labels don't care that much.

I guess you really can't count Prince's Black Album as the first big leak given that it wasn't officially released until years later, but it certainly turned into a big event for bootleggers.

I tend to buy more albums based on what I get from leaks anyways, I've been burned too hard by sub-par releases lately to just fork over cash for somehting tht one of my fave artists made. DJ Shadows latest is a good example and so is RJ-D2's: both were pretty much awful as far as I'm concerned, and I wouldn't have bothered with either if I had gotten the leaked version.

On the other hand, releases by Bonde De Rollo and UNKLE are guaranteed me buying them based on blog or leaked tracks...

@Ned Raggett:

It probably was around Kid A. Napster was not very good for finding full albums, and most people did not have high-speed connections or large hard-drives at the time. I know the IRC thing has been going on forever, but it was really the combination of discovering Direct Connect and access to a T3 line. I miss college.

@Tenno:

I tend to agree. I think we can all cite examples of bands being able to get airplay, chart in the top ten, and play ampitheatres and beyond with no help from a major because of the strength of internet clamor. I don't lament the release-date-as-holiday phenomenon. I'm not sure if many other young people do.

@goldsoundz:

I can cite about 20-30 albums I've bought new, based purely upon leaks, or music blogs such as this one. The majors are just fucking stupid.

@m-j: possibly for bitrate reasons? It's rare something gets nuked on oink for any other reason than that.

@kiteless: well, the dinosaur jr record got taken down until it was out of pre-release mode. (there was another record of recent months that happened with, but i forget now what it is.) and i doubt that icky thump, which has been out for about a month now, is lacking a high-bitrate version online anywhere.

Big media has made their money by controlling the fun stuff that other people want. It is not surprising that they will do whatever they can to keep that control - even if their efforts are ultimately pointless.

I recall my sister downloading half of Limp Bizkit "Significant Other" more than a month before it came out, in 1999.