Recording Industry Insiders Leaking Music

from the gee,-what-a-surprise.. dept

Remember a few months ago all the news that was made over the very obvious fact that movies were often leaked by Hollywood insiders? Well, then, now it should come as no surprise to find out that the music industry is now worried about pre-release music being released by insiders as well. Recently, a number of big name albums have been rushed into stores after tracks started showing up on file sharing systems months before the planned release date. Of course, in many cases the record industry doesn't like to admit that these "pre-release" leaks actually helped build buzz for the albums - but the industry refuses to admit that file sharing has any promotional power. In the meantime, they're wasting a ton of money trying to create special, proprietary "secure delivery methods" to send around tracks from pre-release albums to places like radio stations. As you might imagine, this is angering radio stations who don't see why they can't just send over a CD instead of requiring the radio station to set up some convoluted biometric system that involves having to re-enter your password eight times before you're allowed to enter the system.