Music piracy in 2017 rose 14.7 percent over that of 2016, with 73.9 billion visits to music piracy sites worldwide, according to piracy data insight tracker MUSO’s 2017 Global Piracy Report. The annual report measures piracy from over 30,000 of the highest traffic sites for all formats – including web streaming, download and torrenting.
The report also found there were 300.2 billion visits to piracy sites last year, up 1.6 percent from 2016 when accounting for each sector, and the United States is the leading perpetrator.
Billboardhighlights the facts that the music category’s 73.9 billion visits, MUSO’s data separates sites into five different distinctions: web streaming sites (30.5 billion); web download sites (21.2 billion); streaming ripping sites (15.7 billion); public torrent sites (6 billion) and private torrent sites (500 million). Notably, music piracy is heavily skewed toward mobile users: 87.13 percent of those visits overall were accessed via mobile, compared to just 52 percent for TV piracy.
“There is a belief that the rise in popularity of on-demand services such as Netflix and Spotify have solved piracy, but that theory simply doesn’t stack up,“ MUSO co-founder/CEO Andy Chatterly said in a statement accompanying the report. “Our data suggests that piracy is more popular than ever.”
The findings of the MUSO report support other reports on piracy in recent years. If you recall, a report posted on this blog a little under two years ago cited the piracy in 2015 as being the worse of all-time. That report respected the total rate of piracy to double by 2020 and – at least based on this report from MUSO – that appears to be what will happen.
It is not too late to protect your music. Join Haulix today and receive your first month of secure promotion distribution FREE! Visit our official site for more information.
Believe it or not, piracy is still a (very) big deal. Reports estimate that the total amount of media pirated in 2016 was double what was pirated in 2008, and that number is expected to double once more by 2020.
Streaming services, like Spotify and Apple Music, have soothed some of the financial wounds caused by the continued proliferation of music piracy. Artists and label may not love their streaming royalties, but more and more musicians are relying on those checks to keep their dreams alive.
If you are planning to release new music soon, the hard truth is that your latest creation will almost certainly be pirated online. If not prior to release, then immediately following it, and either way the impact on your bottom line can be crush.
At Haulix, we specialize in keeping music safe. Piracy is our top priority, and we are constantly looking for ways to better protect our clients’ music. We even offer free, one-month trial to all new users.
We have made huge strides in fighting piracy, but the fact remains that the vast majority of music still finds its way online through illegal channels. When that happens to you, here’s what needs to happen:
Remain calm
Theft can be a hard thing to wrap your mind around. Album leaks are usually cause for disappointment, but there is a strange sense of comfort to be found in the fact people around the globe want to hear your music so badly that they are willing to risk being in trouble with the law in order to enjoy it before the scheduled release date. That comfort does not take away from the fact those same individuals have completely screwed the carefully crafted marketing plan you had in place, or course, but focusing on the negatives is not going to do anyone any good.
Publicly recognize the fact your album has leaked and ask for support from those who chose to steal it.
Will everyone who downloads your album eventually purchase a copy if they enjoy it? No. What may happen, however, is that a number of people who otherwise may have never encountered your art might come to appreciate your work as a result of the leak, and in time those newly converted followers will begin to show their support by attending a concert, buying merch, or possibly even picking up a record or two. Remember: Your album is as much a product as it is a marketing tool for your brand, and like it or not your band is a brand at the end of the day. If you cannot sell your album to consumers, you might as well try and sell those who take it for free on seeing you live.
Change your marketing plan
A lot of artists believe that if they choose to ignore the leak of their album and forge ahead with their originally scheduled promotional efforts that their sales will not be hurt. That may apply if you’re someone currently topping the charts, but for those of you on the come up each and every promotional effort made can mean the difference between advancement and career stagnancy.
Depending on when your album leaks, there may be no changes to make. Albums that leak in the final days before release have typically already exhausted most of their promotional plan. That said, if you’re one of the unfortunate souls to have their album leak weeks or even months in advance you will need to adjust your plan to better engage with the new reality of your situation. Song premieres won’t have the same impact they may have otherwise had, but videos and performances can still engage audiences in a big way.
Make a stream of your album available and direct all traffic to that stream
The best thing you can possibly do in the wake of an unexpected leak is to make your album available for purchase and consumption through channels you control. This means your official website, YouTube channel, Bandcamp, etc. Once your fans learn the album is available they will want to look for it, and it is best if they find it through you on a page that you control. Put the record up, make it easy to purchase, and take back control of the conversation.
As an example of someone taking back control of their release, please take a quick look at this message released by our friends at Topshelf Records following the leak of You Blew It’s new album near the beginning of 2014:
Wow. The response to yesterday’s premiere has been overwhelmingly awesome — thank you!
I noticed a ton of “leaked” copies of the record being shared everywhere within an hour of that premiere going up, though, and just wanted to post about that. We don’t mind that, at all. We get it, and that doesn’t bother us — we’re excited people want to share this. However, when “this” is a 92kbps 2003-Myspace-dot-com-era-quality-sounding rip of a stream, we get kinda bummed how that’s what people might be hearing and sharing. So, we’ve now sent out the high quality downloads to everyone who pre-ordered the record. We’re not gonna be download cops about it — share it, enjoy it, tell your friends about it — sing it when you see them on tour this month.
Be proactive in fighting music pirates. Submit take down requests and whatever else needs to be done in order to keep your music away from leak sites.
Haulix simplifies the takedown process and makes it simple to learn who leaked your music. For a free trial, click here.
Fighting an album leak is forever an uphill battle. It only takes one person to leak an album on one site or social media service before files begin spreading like the common cold across the web. You may not be able to completely erase every trace of your early album leak from the net, but with time, dedication, and a little help from Google you can make it a lot more difficult for pirates to locate your stolen material.
First, set up notifications through you favorite digital alert service to notify you anytime someone mentions your album online. You will (hopefully) be inundate with news and reviews most the time, but this service will also peak up leak blogs/sites running your album. You may also want to search for your band name and album title, both together and separately, with the phrases ‘zip’ and ‘rar.’ As soon as you find a link you need removed, contact the blog owner, as well as the site hosting the file download (Mediafire, Sharebeast, Zippyshare, etc.) and politely request that your content be removed with the help of a DCMA take down letter. Then use this form and ask Google to remove links from search. It may take a few days, but most people and sites will comply with your requests. As soon as one goes down, however, another one or three will likely appear. Keep pushing. Keep fighting.
Live to create another day
When all the take downs have been issued and you have told the story of how the leak impacted your plans for the future to the last blogger and fan willing to listen the time will come when you simply need to move on with your career and begin working towards the future. There are more songs to be written, more albums to be recorded, and more many more shows to be performed. People all over the world now have access to your music and no matter what happens from this point forward that will never change. The discovery of your art is going to continue, every day, week, and month for as long as there are people online with a passion for music. There is something beautiful about that, even if it is also financially frustrating, and it offers a rare opportunity to connect with others that many never receive. Make the most of it and forge ahead. Live to create another day.
This post originally appeared on PropertyOfZack. That site has since gone under, so we decided to run the post here for posterity’s sake. Enjoy.
Confession: I work for a company that specializes in fighting music piracy, but I have definitely illegally downloaded my fair share of music from torrents and file-sharing sites over the last decade. I’ve never been busted by the police, nor have I ever had my internet service cancelled, but I will admit to my parents having received one or twelve letters from Comcast threatening to throttle our connection speed if said piracy should persist. Thankfully, things never came to that, but looking back now, they easily could have, and I would have almost certainly been at fault. Something changed, however, and it wasn’t my income or my parents’ willingness to support my addiction to new music. It was my understanding of entertainment not only as an art form, but also as a business, and it was at that moment I understood the true impact piracy has on the industry at large.
The first album I remember downloading illegally is Hit The Lights’ Triple Crown Records debut, This Is A Stick Up, Don’t Make It A Murder. There are probably hundreds of songs or records I’ve downloaded over the years without having much excuse for doing so — aside from lack of money — but this album I specifically remember because it leaked well over a month in advance of the official street date. At that time, I was just reaching the end of my time in high school, and Hit The Lights had been the pop-punk soundtrack that fueled my last few years. The town I lived in had a venue, and it was through interning there I was first exposed to working in the industry. I would book shows and promote them throughout the county, including more than half a dozen performances featuring a then-unsigned Hit The Lights. They were some of the first traveling musicians I felt were like family, and whenever they came through town, they were free to sleep on my parents’ living room floor. When they played thirty or forty miles away, calls and texts would be exchanged so that we could spend time together while they were in the area. We were, for lack of a better description, as close as people could be in this business without being contractually tied to each other.
I can still clearly remember the rush of excitement that swept over me when a friend informed me between classes that they had heard the Hit The Lights album leaked online. I ran home as quickly as possible and began downloading every track, one at a time, through our family’s 56k dial-up connection. I think it took over two hours for every song to complete, but when they were finished, I quickly burned two copies – one for home and one for my car – then sped off to find empty country roads to roam while blasting the record as loud as my speakers would allow. It was an incredible album, and even though several of the songs were updated versions of tracks I already knew, the entire experience felt like a first time encounter. I was head over heels from the first spin, and nearly a decade later I can still recall the way that love initially felt.
Thinking back now, I don’t recall anyone in my circle of friends saying anything negative about the fact I downloaded that Hit The Lights record. To be fair, most the people I knew had no idea who Hit The Lights were, and even if they did they certainly did not care enough to go to bat for them in a discussion over the legality of file-sharing services like Napster or Kazaa. We all knew piracy was a hot button topic — the news made that clear on a near weekly basis — but being from a small town that was at least thirty minutes from anything even beginning to resemble a city it was easy to feel like those issues had no real impact on our lives. After all, none of us were professional musicians, and those who did have a band would have given their left arm to have thousands downloading their material. They already weren’t making money, so what did it matter if a few thousand people downloaded a record no one was buying? To them, it was just free exposure.
When I entered college, I left my small town behind and moved to a slightly larger town with a school that helped to triple the area’s population nine months out of the year. Again, it was far enough from creative areas to feel disconnected from the entertainment world, which meant essentially no one gave a second thought to the idea of downloading media illegally. At this point, however, the crimes became slightly worse. As internet connections grew quicker, the demand for media on file-sharing services ballooned as well, leading to a boom in piracy across music, television, film, video games, books, and even computer applications. No form of creativity seemed safe outside of fine art, and even those images and sculptures were easily found through reference material widely available on torrent services. I didn’t care though, I just wanted to watch the latest episode of Scrubs without having to be in front of my TV at 8 p.m. every Thursday. Playback services like TiVo were still new at the time, so it wasn’t the type of tech the average college student could afford. We could, however, afford an internet connection strong enough to download whatever media we wanted to enjoy in only a matter of minutes. So, without any concern for the legality of everything, that’s exactly what we did.
I’m not trying to make an excuse for myself, but I do want to get across the point that few, if any, of the streaming services that simplify our lives today were active at this point in time. Though the digital age had no doubt arrived, bringing with it the rise of social media, access to streaming content online was severely limited. Even Netflix, who we now look to as a cornerstone of digital content, was still making the bulk of its money from DVD rentals. It sounds like ancient history, I know, but this was less than a decade ago.
Anyways, school continued and I slowly began to piece together the reality of life in the music business. Not just for professionals, mind you, but for artists as well. My entire life I had been under the assumption that creative people who made art for the purpose of generating income were somehow missing the point of being a creative person. I thought people like this were somehow ‘sellouts,’ or at the very least frauds because everything they did – every emotion shared – was done with dollar signs in the back of their mind. My inexperienced mind likened this outlook as one only corporate scum could possess and, for whatever reason, piracy felt like a reasonable way to strike back against the so-called man and his obsession with bottom line.
Looking back now, I was an asshole. Truth be told, I probably still am, but hopefully for different reasons. I thought musicians who created new works with money in mind were fools, but in reality they are often the most sane people in the industry. They understand that every band is essentially a small business. Their products are music and merchandise, their consumers are their fans, and the target market is anyone who listens to the type of music that particular act aspire to create. They don’t have a headquarters, but instead travel from town to town peddling their creations like traveling salesman hocking vacuums in the mid-1950s. They live and die based on the funding that keeps them active, and without keeping the flow of money in mind it can be very easy for your career to fall apart. Likewise, businesses that do not focus on improving their return on investment year over year are doomed to eventually collapse.
I know it feels like betraying everything punk has taught us by viewing things this way, but in order to fully grasp the realities of attempting to be a professional musician, you must first learn to see every musical project as a small business in need of consumer support. Piracy, on any level, is akin to walking in the door of your favorite store and walking out with any amount of products without paying a dime. It’s stealing, and whether you do it because you think labels are stealing from bands or because you believe it’s the only way to discover new music in 2015, you’re wrong. I know you think your intentions are good, but any artist will tell you good intentions rarely pay the bills.
My favorite excuse to hear from people today is the one that more or less argues the idea that going to shows somehow makes stealing music okay. As fans see it, bands are getting their money either way, and for whatever reason they believe the live setting will allow them to support the artist without ‘the man’ getting involved. Here’s the thing: If the artist in question is signed to a label or in any way working with a manager, booking agent, or other industry professional, the entity you call ‘the man’ is always involved. Someone else is always going to get a cut. If it’s a label, the artist you love was given money by people who believed in them to create a new album, tour, and so on. In order to continue being able to do these things, the artist is first expected to pay off that initial investment. If that doesn’t happen, it’s very likely the artist will get dropped, or at the very least neglected moving forward. As I said before, every band is a business, and labels are bigger corporations who essentially enter partnerships with those businesses. When deals go well, they continue to work together. When things go bad, deals are broken.
Furthermore, the majority of bands you see on tour are not making enough money to support themselves full-time. They may be able to pay off their road expenses, including buying merchandise in bulk, but when their time on the road ends, so does the flow of money. Headline acts are a different story, especially if you can fill venues with capacity over 500 people, but most artists never reach that point. Most achieve mid-level success at best, and there is very little money for people in that position. Eric Morgan of the band Bornstellar once called this ‘The $200 Hump.’ He said it’s very easy to climb through the ranks of road success with steady dedication, but until you have a reasonable hit to help with promotion it’s hard to rise above the title of direct support on any bill. As a result, seasoned bands are forced to rely on things like merch sales, and even that income must sometimes be split with management, merch guys, and/or drivers.
Let’s do a quick example: A band with five members performing a direct support slot on a three-band bill is guaranteed $200 a night, every night of a three-week tour. This is enough money to get them from city to city, and it allows each of them to receive a few bucks each day with which to feed themselves. In order to make additional money, they must first make merch, which comes with an investment. If they print 50 shirts on quality fabric they’re looking at around $7.50 a shirt. That’s $375 someone has to put on a credit card until money comes in. If they want physical copies of their music to sell, those cost money as well. They can find deals online though, so let’s say they make 500 copies for $500. Now the band has shirts and CDs, but they’re also $875 in the hole before even playing a show. If they’re lucky, they will sell everything they purchased while on the road. If CDs are $5 and shirts are $15, that’s $3,250 in gross profit ($2,500 from CDs + $750 from shirts). Subtract the $875 investment and the band is left with $2,375. If the band saves nothing and has no other expenses whatsoever, which is highly unlikely, they could each walk away with $475 to show for their work. If they played every night for three weeks, that’s an average of $22.62 per person per show. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t know any adult who can live on those wages, especially not those with any kind of family to support.
The truth is that there is really no excuse for pirating music in 2015. I’m not arguing that a good excuse ever existed, but even the shadiest of reasoning needs to be extinguished from our collective thoughts in the months to come. There are simply too many ways to access free music on legal terms, be it for discovery purposes or general enjoyment, for there to be any question over whether or not such actions can continue to be justified. We can all name the companies that make this technology available as well, like Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Rdio, Shuffler, and so on. The word is out about these services and those unwilling to buy entire albums can, at the very least, use these services to ensure the creators of the art they enjoy see some return for their effort. If you’re still downloading music you’re an asshole, plain and simple. You can preach on every mountaintop about the need to create out of a sheer drive to share your vision with the world and how money should never play a factor, but the harsh light of reality reveals that living with such beliefs will ultimately lead to ruin. You have to create with money in mind, at least to some extent, because your very livelihood depends on your continued success as a musician.
In 2015, I am going to do my absolute best to resist downloading any leaked music. If something leaks online through a streaming platform and sites begin embedding it at large, all bets are off, but when it comes to acquiring media for my personal collection without in some way contributing to the continued success of its creators, I am determined to make a change. You should too, and not just because I did all the math necessary for the example a few paragraphs above. You should stop downloading music because you respect the people creating it enough to access it by fair and legal means. If you want to try before you commit to purchasing an album there are plenty of platforms that allow for that kind of engagement with music, and if you simply don’t want to wait for the big record to hit stores that leaked last night, maybe it’s time to disconnect and do something else.
I get it. You just want to experience everything the artists you love can create, and you want it as soon as possible. Our culture is transitioning to meet those demands more and more, but as it stands, there are people working incredibly hard to plan release dates so the artists you love can gain maximum exposure, which increases the likelihood of them finding some semblance of longterm support in this often crazy industry. I beg of you to respect that system, and I would hope that as diehard music fans you can appreciate how much your actions set the tone for culture at large. You are the tastemakers. You are the trendsetters. You have the power to curb this rampant acceptance of digital piracy and I would give anything in my possession to have you use that power for good. Stop downloading, stop seeking leaks, and start truly supporting the creative minds you claim to love.
This is going to seem a bit callous, but it’s something you should ask yourself later this week: What is the value of a fan who does not support the artist they claim to love by financial means? Word of mouth is good, but only to an extent. If you’re still claiming your ‘word of mouth’ promotion is helping a band like Fall Out Boy, you’re lying to yourself and everyone you contact. You’re stealing music because it’s easy and you like not having to pay for every album you want to hear. That’s easy to understand, and even easier to implement, but I urge you – think about the consequences of your actions. Think about the bands we all knew were capable of big things, but due to a lack of proper support they faded long before they reached the heights of success they deserved. As a pirate, you are partially responsible for the deaths of those bands, and I would hope you wouldn’t want to cause such hardship on another artist again.
James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.
From day one, our mission at Haulix has been to provide the easiest and most secure platform to distribute advance music available. We like to think we have accomplished that, though our efforts to actually defeat piracy continue to this day. Still, many inside our industry, as well as general consumers, no longer think piracy is as big of an issue as it was during the heyday of Napster and related P2P servers. As much as we wish that were the case, it’s simply not the truth, and we are now able to share new research that shows just how damaging digital piracy continues to be to the music industry as a whole in 2015.
Fact: File-sharing in North America has grown 44% from 2008 to 2014. This runs counter to essentially every news article written by mainstream press, which often sites the rise in streaming platforms as an argument for why piracy is no longer a big deal, but it IS a big deal. Actually, it’s bigger than big. The continuing rise of piracy tells us that even though access to music through legal means is seemingly easier than ever before people are still turning to illegal activity in order to enjoy their favorite entertainers.
The U.S. Copyright Office put out a report in February 2015 titled ‘Copyright and the Music Marketplace’ where regarding piracy, the editor stated, “Unlike in the Napster era, stakeholders now seem resigned to this marketplace condition and the perhaps irreversible impact it has had on the industry.” As much as this thought makes us cringe, it’s not entirely untrue. Every single music industry client we have had over the years has expressed a certain level of expectation regarding leaks. They don’t want them to happen, but they expect the will, even if they take extra measure to prevent such activity from take place. They believe those who wish to leak something will aways find a way to do so, and we at Haulix have made it our mission to prove that does not have to be the case.
When someone signs up for Haulix they are making it known they will no longer sit back while pirates steal the work of their artists and freely share that content online. With the help of our state-of-the-art watermarking technology, as well as secure email distribution, we offer front line defense against leaks, with additional security measures being implemented on a regular basis. Should a clients material still find its way online, we also have tools in place to aide in the removal of leaked files from the internet. Our ‘Automated Takedown’ service, for example, crawls the web endlessly in search of pirated materials. Once located, the system logs the link, auto-submits an RIAA takedown notice, and then tracks the action of the link host until the files have been erased or removed.
Just because digital piracy has been present for more than a decade does not mean it has to continue to exist for the foreseeable future, but labels and artists alike must take action in order to make a change. Signing up for Haulix is the first step to ensuring your future releases are safe from pirates, and we have a team of industry experts on hand waiting to assist you in making sure your content is not only safe, but also presented to the press in a way that reflect the brand(s) you are trying to develop. We believe a future without piracy is very much a possibility, and we are working every day to provide industry professionals with the tools they need to help us win the war against leaks. If you’re ready to join our ranks, click here to start your free 30-day trial today.
Earlier this week I was browsing a forum for online music journalists when I came across a question I knew we had to feature on the blog. I won’t out the person who first posed this inquiry, but I did want to share their original comment in full as I feel it’s probably not far from how other young writers have felt or acted when trying to build their brand. It reads:
“Okay…. I just want to make sure I’m not making some rookie mistake. When I get haulix invites or private links, I forward it to my writer depending on their tastes, yeah? Obviously, you’re not supposed to share the invite, and my writers sign a disclaimer about not sharing music and if they do it’s on them, but surely they don’t mean “do not forward this to a writer?” I just ask because I got Finch’s album from razor and tie and she asked me to please not share it. I would never do that outside of sharing it with ONE writer that is writing the review.”
This is not an uncommon question, and to be honest we are kind of glad someone brought this post to our attention as it provides the perfect opportunity to address this concern on a large scale.
To put it the simplest terms possible: You should never share a Haulix promo. There is messaging included with every promo sent out that informs recipients their promos are not to be shared, but there are many who do not follow this request. By sharing Haulix promos you are not only breaking the trust of the label/publicist who sent you that material, but you are also putting yourself in a position to face severe legal repercussions should that material find its way onto the internet.
Most promos sent from Haulix are injected with numerous watermarks that not only identify the original recipient, but also the geo-locations of every person who accesses the respective promo. You should check each promo you receive to know whether or not that particular advance has a watermark. If you share your watermarked promo with someone, and that person later leaks the material online, our tools will point to you as the person responsible for the piracy. You may not have leaked the album yourself, but because the record was entrusted to you it is your responsibility to ensure it is not made available for public consumption. Should that occur, any legal action taken to recoup lost profits will be made against you and not the friend who you allowed to enjoy your advance.
To better explain what happens when an album leaks, we asked Rey Roldan of Another Reybee Production to share some of his experience with piracy:
“A blogger who is part of this site once sent a download of a band I was working with to two writers. One of his writers leaked the album (it was a very highly coveted advance). When we traced it back, we found his watermark. Label, management, band and I were thisclose to taking this a step further in the legal direction. While the writer was responsible for the leak, said "blogger” was ultimately responsible because he breached the contract (I often tick off the “watermark warning” with writers who I am unsure of, just as an extra warning). We got very close to making it legal but we opted to re-strategize and move forward.
I know some editors pass round links designated for them and it sucks. I usually often tell editors that if they are assigning a writer, give me their email address so I can get them their own watermarked music. To be honest, do YOU trust your writers to NOT leak music? If they did leak it, do you want to be legally and professionally responsible for that because YOUR watermark is on that music? God forbid, you pass your streak or download to a writer who inadvertently leaks it, do you want to become that industry pariah?
The music industry is really pretty tiny… Make the wrong move and it can follow you… Be smart about this… Request a link for anyone who is reviewing it for you. Don’t take the fall for anyone because it can happen a LOT easier than you think.”
Some sites may believe an easy solution to this problem is to have one email dedicated to receiving promos that every contributor can access. This may work at first, but should any member of your staff leave the site it is of the utmost importance you change both your email password, as well as your 4-digit Haulix passcode. That way, if they have a promo link and/or access to a promo, they can’t get to ***all**** promos, because they won’t know the passcode.
Likewise, if you allow writers to reach out to publicists on their own and one of your writers decides to leave your site, make sure you inform all publicists the writer has left and is no longer a part of your writing team. If not, that person may continue to receive advances that are linked to your site. Should something happen to those files, it may come back to you.
The best thing you can do to protect yourself and the reputation of your site is to first do a good job vetting your writing staff. Make sure you trust everyone you send releases to not only as writers, but as professionals in the industry. If you would not trust a writer to contact a label directly you might not want them handling advance releases.
Haulix has no say in what happens to individuals caught sharing watermarked materials. We are simply a middle man between journalists and labels. It’s up to our customers to handle the situation how they see fit.
Additionally, you should ALWAYS request additional promos if someone other than you will be reviewing material you have been sent. It may seem like this complicates or otherwise draws out the assignment process, but publicists would rather know who is in possession of their music than have less work to do. For example, let’s say I send you, a blog owner, a copy of my client’s album for your site. You receive the promo, pass it off to a writers, and several days later send me a link to a review of my client’s album written by someone who is not you. Who is this third party? How did they get the watermarked music I sent you? Are they someone I can trust? I have a million questions about this anonymous person. In fact, I may not want to send you another advance if I think you’re going to pass it off to more people I do not know.
It’s easy to understand why forwarding promos seems like a quick solution to the issue of how to get advances from one person to another, but actually taking part in such efforts puts you, your reputation, the livelihood of your site, and possibly even the reputations of your contributors at risk. It takes less than a minute to request additional promos, and doing so keeps you out of trouble.
Don’t risk a leak just to save time. It’s just not worth it.
Hello, everyone. Today is an exciting, albeit somewhat sad day. We are quite thrilled to be sharing the fourth and final installment in our ‘My Life A Music Pirate’ series, but are sad to see such a beloved column put to rest so soon. If you have any questions about the content of this post, or if you are interested in learning more about the secure music distribution services offered by Haulix, please email james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.
Today we put to rest one of the most interesting features we have ever run on this blog. Over the last month we have featured a series of posts on piracy written by a current music professional who has previously leaked countless albums online (part 1, part 2, part 3). Their story is one that I am sure many reading this can relate to, but somewhere along the line this individual got caught up in file-sharing and spent several years breaking the law as a result. They claim to have cleaned up their act, and for what it’s worth I tend to believe them, but as the initial columns began running on this site we could not help noticing an influx of inquiries from readers with questions for our pirate and their supposed retirement. It took a little convincing, but after two weeks of waiting our pirate has emerge from the depths of the internet once more to answer your questions on their life, the repercussions of their decisions, and how they see the industry changing to further combat piracy in the future. You can read their thoughts below.
We have said this from the beginning, but it’s worth repeating that we have absolutely no intentions of revealing the identity of the person behind these posts. The pirate in question has been disconnected from the file-sharing world for over a year at this point, and we truly hope they manage to steer clear of trouble in the future.
[all questions based on reader’s emails]
H: Do you remember the first album you downloaded illegally? How about the first one you uploaded to share with the world?
As I said before, when I first started downloading I was downloading single songs. I wasn’t into full albums. By the time I was, I was gettings discs from the library to rip. I think my first full album download may have been The Prizefighter Inferno’s debut album. I couldn’t find that at the library, so I went online for it.
H: What is the furthest in advance of an album’s release that you would leak it? Did that time remaining before release play a factor at all?
Of course it did. The sooner, the better. When you’re leaking music, you’ve got to be first to be remembered.
H: What was the application process like for the leak site? If I ran something like that I would suspect everyone of being out to get me.
It wasn’t so formal. We got something we ran it.
H: Did you have any close calls with the law/RIAA?
We’d get notices, but no more than the average music blog with a stream. Most of our links would get taken down, but copyright holders would provide the DMCA notices to hosts like Mediafire and Rapidshare. On occasion, we’d get angry emails from band members that felt helpless and couldn’t actually do anything. I remember once a label offered us advances in exchange for not posting their roster’s material. We took the deal and subsequently posted links to the albums they gave us.
H: Did you ever have a moment when you were overcome with the thought you may be doing something wrong? Do you even see piracy as being wrong?
I don’t think there was one moment. I think it was a more gradual decision. Of course I see it as wrong? Didn’t you read my letters? Readthemhere.
H: What benefits do you believe there were, if any, to the artists and labels whose work you shared without permission?
Even bad press is good press, they say. Seriously. Kids listened to the records I posted and went to shows. Some bought merch, some didn’t, they all tweeted and shared with friends. There are ways to make the most of a leak and a lot of artists figured out how to do that.
(Editor’s note: Haulix has a post that can help with that.)
H: Have you met any other music industry professionals actively involved in music piracy?
Actively? No. All of my old mates are out of the game.
H: Do you ever worry that your pirate past will catch up to you?
You’d be surprised how many of my colleagues are aware of my pirating past. I’m not that concerned about it.
H: What lessons, if any, did you learn from your time as a pirate?
That kids like free shit, that I liked introducing people to bands, that bands are made up of people making creative shit, and that underselling the value of that creative shit was a shitty thing to do.
H: What, if anything, can be done to stop piracy? More importantly, do you feel it should be stopped?
Piracy won’t die. People will always want something of value for nothing. That’s human nature. Still, things like Rdio and Spotify help cut out the need to download something to have it for free right away. Dying leak hosts help too. There are a lot less leaks going around now that It-Leaked is gone.
H: Where do you go from here?
I keep doing what I do. I write, I help musicians out where I can, and I drink more than I should sometimes. I live life and listen to music while I do it. That’s all I can do.
This article is the third in a four-part series on piracy. Click here to read the previous entries.
We love creating content for this blog, but the true mission of Haulix has always been to provide the most secure music hosting and distribution services available online. It’s no secret that piracy has crippled the music industry in many ways over the last decade, and we strive every day to do whatever we can to prevent future music leaks. You see, we may not be musicians ourselves, but recognize that the livelihood of everyone in the music business is dependent on the continued success and support of the artists we sign, promote, and otherwise get behind. If we do not do our part to help them support themselves however we are able then how can we expect anyone to help us when piracy eventually erodes entire segments of the industry?
Recently, it dawned on us that we did not have a strong grasp on what actually makes someone want to leak music. The assumption has been made in the past that these so-called ‘music pirates’ think the praise from anonymous commenters on message boards and forums is enough of a reward to convince them to hurt artists and those who fund them, but frankly we thought that felt a bit too simple to be entirely true. So we decided to do something we had never done before: Seek out a music pirate and convince them to share their story.
This afternoon we are thrilled to share the third in a four-part series that aims to take a closer look at music piracy as seen through the eyes of someone directly responsible for the leaks of several high-profile albums. It’s the story of one individual who managed to engrain themselves in the music industry professionally while simultaneously sharing unreleased records with the world, and it’s told entirely in their own words.
**As part of our agreement with the author of this series, a number of names and websites have been altered to protect identities and certain brand reputations. We have no intention to reveal the author’s name or location.**
When I began my first music-related blog. I had no real appreciation for music journalism or how that sort of thing worked. I just wrote about bands I liked and offered free downloads of their songs via filesharing websites like Mediafire and MegaUpload. It seemed innocent enough and as far I was concerned, I was doing these bands a favor. Free publicity! So that’s what I did. I downloaded songs, re-uploaded them, wrote blurbs, and shared them around.
Through this, my blog saw some success. A few hundred hits here and there added up. I made friends with others who ran similar sites like BrokeNoise, It-Leaked, MP3Boo, Get an Earection, Strike Gently, and a crudely named site I would later admin called LeakySlut. It was a community. We raced against and supported each other. This is what made it fun.
I ran LeakySlut, my own blog, as well as a forum or two for over a year. The first taking priority as a direct competitor to Strike Gently’s fall into poo porn and t-shirt sales. I leaked music and I was good at it. When we got a hold of things early, we’d upload the tracks laced with ID3 tags sporting our brand and push them out to the masses. I pushed the site to my friends and on Internet message boards. When I visited universities I would change the “ready” prompt on printer displays to “leakyslut.com.” I left the site open on public computers. The name alone generated enough interest to click around. When someone asked if it was porn they were looking at, a person would have to show and explain that it wasn’t. The site was self marketing. When I came aboard in fall of 2010, I took a blog posting once or twice a day and turned it into the new #1 source for music leaks in the alternative music community. This was something I was very proud of and later ashamed of. The thrill of delivering copyrighted content to thousands of fans hungry for it felt good, if only for the minutes following the initial post. I felt like I was doing something worthwhile. I thought I was part of the process when, in actuality, I was hindering it.
LeakySlut is gone now. It began to fizzle out once I left for more legitimate work. In spring of 2011, I left the leaking game and never looked back.
A week after leaving LeakySlut, I started an editor’s gig at a music webzine. No more links to zip files and mp3s. Just words on sounds. I had shed the peg leg and eye patch and it felt good. It was every bit as exciting as what I did before, only constructive and beneficial for the artists that I wrote about.
Now I didn’t have to go to sketchy sites to download songs. Instead I was getting albums sent to me unsolicited because I just might listen to it and write about it. I felt important. The feeling here lasted much longer than it did with leaks. I didn’t have to worry about links getting broken because of DMCA takedowns or emails from labels threatening legal action. The words were enough and they were eternal.
I still write about music today. I’ve contributed to a number of publications and haven’t leaked an album in almost 5 years. I’ve never even considered it. I’m in a place where artists, managers, and publicists trust me with their livelihood. They send me their songs trusting that I won’t put them online. I know that doing so could seriously jeapordize their marketing plans and corresponding income. I’m bigger than that. I’m not a villian. I’m a fan of music. Promoting and sharing my taste with others is reward enough. The perks of music journalism are just a plus.
Do I still download music without paying for it? Certainly. But thinking back on the last year of my life in music, I can’t think of a single instance where I didn’t later purchase the artists’ full release. If I want to hear a song now, I can pull up Rdio and listen to it. I pay $10/month to the service and the artist gets a small payout for the play. If I love it, I’ll seek it out on vinyl to add to my collection. I take up Soundcloud download offers when I find them and only rip songs from streaming services if they are no longer available (I’m still an avid demo hunter).
My life as a digital pirate is drawing closer and closer to an end every year. With advancing technology and a deep sense of admiration and respect for my industry’s peers, I have no need for it anymore. I think that this rings true with a lot of fans as well. A majority of the sites I named about no longer exist due to a lack of interest. Even the existing torrenting communities like what.cd are withering away with declining traffic and membership.
In the end convenience is key and if there are better, more legal, alternatives for listening to music, people will take them. Streaming services like Spotify, Rdio, and YouTube are clear indicators of that. The benefits to these serves opposed to piracy are numerous and are topic for another day.
I’m not completely ashamed of my piracy history. It got me to where I am. I learned valuable lessons about art and property through my experience and I think I’m better for it. The Jolly Roger has been lowered and my tri-cornered cap has been hung in the locker of Davy Jones. I won’t be fetching it again.
One of the most exciting things about starting a new column is seeing how you, our readers, engage with the content and help shape it moving forward. In the weeks since Journalism Tips launched we have been inundated with requests for columns on various aspects of the music writing world, and we plan to tackle each one over time. If you have any questions about developing as a writer/blogger in music, please do not hesitate email james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.
We talk a lot about music piracy and the way it impacts the lives of artists, but album leaks have a way of hurting writers as well. The Rolling Stones of the world may be able to rely on their hundreds of thousands of dedicated readers to support them day in and day out, but writers on the rise and sites just starting to develop their brand rely heavily on features and exclusive content to help bring attention to their efforts. When albums leak in advance of their intended release date the content writers have planned is likely to suffer a drop in appeal. Song premieres are usually the worst hit, but even reviews and interviews can see a dip depending on when the album leaks in relation to its street date and whether or not people seem to like it.
There is not much you can do to prevent pirates from leaking music aside from not supporting or promoting their efforts, but there are ways to alter your original content plans to pull in readers regardless of an album’s availability online.
Address the leak and explain how your content will offer superior sound quality.
The one thing artists hate as much as seeing their music leak is seeing a poor quality version of their music leak. First impressions are everything, and that goes double when the decision of whether or not to spend money on something (in this case, an artist’s music) is concerned.
If you see content you plan to feature leak, take it upon yourself to begin promoting the quality of the audio you will be hosting through your various social networks. There may be a version of the album online, but you have the ‘studio version’ of the recording you plan to share.
A lot of artists take this additional promotional angle into their own hands by creating lyric videos or similar accompanying content in advance of planning exclusives. These artists should be your best friend and whenever you cross paths with them in real life you need to give them all the high fives your hands can stand because they ‘get it.’
I do not advise creating a blog post about the leak. No one (labels, publicists, artists, etc.) appreciates that stuff.
Go ‘Behind The Music’
When albums leak more than a few days before their scheduled release date, it’s possible your site will find itself with a song premiere fans are now less interested in than they were prior to the album leak. Your traffic will still see a bump, and you will most likely still receive a mention in press releases, but the young people who actually engage with the artist day in and day out will have already heard whatever exclusive you have planned. What they may not have heard, however, is the story behind the song. By requesting a quote from the artists on the inspiration for the song, or perhaps some information on the artist’s studio experience, you will be able to create more dynamic content that has a ‘cool’ factor which extends beyond the song at the center of the article.
You can also take things further and request an interview with artist, but time constraints may make such undertakings impossible.
Ask for a contest / something to expand your offering
One thing people love more than the allure of free digital music is the allure of free vinyl and/or concert tickets. Most people are willing to work with sites to create contests, and many have both tickets and physical copies of the album to give away. If a leak should occur, draft an original contest tie-in for the exclusive you are planning to run and ask if the band is interested in working with you. Most will see the opportunity as another way to detract attention from the leak and pounce.
Creativity goes a long way with this tip. I advise making those who want to enter share your content on various networks (tagging both you and the artist as part of their entry).
Prepare for the worst
We ran a column last week that advised every artist, regardless of genre or level of success, to create a plan of action in case their album should leak. Writers need to put similar contingency plans in place should their features be spoiled by the internet.
Whenever you have the opportunity to set up a song premiere or related exclusive with an artist, think ahead and ask yourself: “What would make this content irresistible to the band’s fans?” Your role as a music writer is more than copy and pasting code and album information from one page to another. Create something worth reading and, perhaps more importantly, something worth sharing. Readers will appreciate it and artists will too.
This article is the second in a four-part series on piracy. Click here to read the first entry.
We love creating content for this blog, but the true mission of Haulix has always been to provide the most secure music hosting and distribution services available online. It’s no secret that piracy has crippled the music industry in many ways over the last decade, and we strive every day to do whatever we can to prevent future music leaks. You see, we may not be musicians ourselves, but recognize that the livelihood of everyone in the music business is dependent on the continued success and support of the artists we sign, promote, and otherwise get behind. If we do not do our part to help them support themselves however we are able then how can we expect anyone to help us when piracy eventually erodes entire segments of the industry?
Recently, it dawned on us that we did not have a strong grasp on what actually makes someone want to leak music. The assumption has been made in the past that these so-called ‘music pirates’ think the praise from anonymous commenters on message boards and forums is enough of a reward to convince them to hurt artists and those who fund them, but frankly we thought that felt a bit too simple to be entirely true. So we decided to do something we had never done before: Seek out a music pirate and convince them to share their story.
This afternoon we are thrilled to share the second in a four-part series that aims to take a closer look at music piracy as seen through the eyes of someone directly responsible for the leaks of several high-profile albums. It’s the story of one individual who managed to engrain themselves in the music industry professionally while simultaneously sharing unreleased records with the world, and it’s told entirely in their own words.
**As part of our agreement with the author of this series, a number of names and websites have been altered to protect identities and certain brand reputations. We have no intention to reveal the author’s name or location.**
PART 2 – High School
Throughout my last years of middle school and the beginnings of high school, I kept on collecting. These were formative years by means of my general taste in music. Many of my favorites today were discovered on new release shelves at libraries and in my friend’s collections. I continued to plunder and steal and tally. It was around this time that I first came into contact with the idea of torrenting.
I was always good with computers. My Powerpoints and Windows Movie Maker projects were always the most detailed and animated in classes. If a teacher’s PC wasn’t starting correctly, I was normally the first they’d ask to look at it. My family relied on me for setting up, fixing, and cleaning up their Windows XP-based desktops and I took pride in that. Still, there were things could admit to not understanding and torrenting was one of them. Limewire was one thing. To search and download was easy enough, but somehow the idea of torrenting from The Pirate Bay seemed daunting to me, so I brushed past it and stuck with the citrusy latter.
Oh Limewire, you dangerous little thing. You never did quite know what you were getting with this P2P service. Mistitled songs, incorrectly attributed ID3 tags, viruses abundant… My grandparent’s PC was at the whim of Internet strangers when I began using its services. This was my first real taste of the dangers of piracy and its use was the first thing that made me question not only the legality of music downloading, but the morality as well.
At this point, my library was starting to get a bit messier. I was downloading more single songs than albums. Correctly naming them took time and time was something I began to have less of due to after school activities and clubs. So my collection grew untidy and my care for the music I was getting outgrew that of the number of songs I had. This is when I started becoming a “fan.”
As high school progressed and more Internet access was available to me, I started using my computer ability to my music hunting advantage. First I’d navigate around my school’s Internet blocker of choice using a proxy (or occasionally the actual bypass password itself if I could find it). Then I’d bring up Myspace, Purevolume, or YouTube and peruse the charts. If a download was available, I’d take it. If it wasn’t. I’d make it. Audicity was good for that. A quick switch from “microphone” to “wave out mix” made any listening experience an act of copyright infringement.
Then came blogging. Once I found WordPress and Tumblr, I took piracy a bit further. I went from music collector to music distributor with ease.
My Life As A Music Pirate will continue next Thursday, April 3. Follow Haulix on Twitter and Facebook for updates.
Here at Haulix, we dedicate the majority of our daily lives to making sure the music stored and distributed through our state-of-the-art servicing platform is as secure as it can possibly be. From the moment clients upload music to our servers their files are watermarked, and from that point forward every individual accessing their content is given a unique identifier that allows us to trace the source of any future leaks (should they happen to occur). It’s our mission to keep your music away from the public until its intended release date, and we are always open to discussing that mission with anyone who may be unfamiliar with our efforts. If that applies to you, please do not hesitate to email support@haulix.zendesk.com and ask for additional information. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.
There is a hard truth to life as a musician that you might as well face now: Your music, be it a future single or the album that follows a few months later, will sooner or later fall victim to music piracy and be freely available to anyone with a working knowledge of Google. It has happened to countless artists from every corner of the planet millions of times before you came along and it will, unfortunately, continue to happen to artists who deserve better for the foreseeable future. We are doing our part to put an end to music piracy, but until it’s wiped from the internet for good artists and groups of all sizes need to be prepared for the worst.
When that frustrating day comes, and it pains us to confess it will more than likely happen to every artist one day, you need to have a plan in place that can be enacted on extremely short notice. These plans will vary greatly from group to group, but there are several universal steps every artist can follow to minimize the damage done from their album reaching blogs before iTunes or Bandcamp. Let’s take a look at them now:
1. Stay calm and remember that the world is not coming to an end.
Album leaks are usually cause for disappointment, but there is a strange sense of comfort to be found in the fact people around the globe want to hear your music so badly that they are willing to risk being in trouble with the law in order to enjoy it before the scheduled release date. That comfort does not take away from the fact those same individuals have completely screwed the carefully crafted marketing plan you had in place, or course, but focusing on the negatives is not going to do anyone any good.
Whether your album leaks a day early or a two months in advance it is important to remember that your career has not been blown to tiny bits of completely free digital dust. It is only a minor setback, thanks in part to the fact you properly prepared for such unfortunate events after reading this article, and with a little focus you will be able to recognize that you’re in a unique position to capitalize on fan-driven curiosity in your album. Embrace it.
2. Recognize the fact your album has leaked, and ask those who enjoy it to support you any way they are able.
Will everyone who downloads your album eventually purchase a copy if they enjoy it? No. What may happen, however, is that a number of people who otherwise may have never encountered your art might come to appreciate your work as a result of the leak, and in time those newly converted followers will begin to show their support by attending a concert, buying merch, or possibly even picking up a record or two. Remember: Your album is as much a product as it is a marketing tool for your brand, and like it or not your band is a brand at the end of the day. If you cannot sell your album to consumers, you might as well try and sell those who take it for free on seeing you live. If they come, great! If they come and buy merch, even better! Either way they will come away from engaging your band with the outlook that you appreciate them simply for being a fan, and even though you wish people bought your music you can understand it’s not something everyone is capable of doing. That kind of outlook makes you appear more human than rockstar, and being viewed in that context is often far more rewarding longterm than any short term financial gains.
3. Revisit your marketing plan and make changes where necessary.
A lot of artists believe that if they choose to ignore the leak of their album and forge ahead with their originally scheduled promotional efforts that their sales will not be hurt. That may apply if you’re someone currently topping the charts, but for those of you on the come up each and every promotional effort made can mean the difference between advancement and career stagnancy. Album leaks should change your marketing plan because the circumstances surrounding the availability of your latest material has changed. Song premieres, for example, are not going to have the same impact now that fans can download the full record with a few clicks, so it is of the utmost importance to take time as an artist or group to try and further refine what is already scheduled it order to make that content more appealing to those who accessed your material early. Offer a behind-the-scenes look at your time in the studio, or put together a track-by-track rundown of the record. If you’re going to continue with songs premieres then make sure you have a lyric video or similar accompanying item to make the exclusive more enticing to fans who have already heard the full album, as well as the blogs who are hosting that content. If you know your album leaked it’s more than likely the bloggers do as well, and they also recognize how unlikely it is certain exclusives will bring in much traffic if the material is freely available elsewhere.
Challenge yourself to do more than you thought necessary, or even possible, and you will succeed. Stay the course and your release may very well be forgotten by the time it hits iTunes. It’s that simple.
4. Make a stream of your album available and direct all traffic to that stream.
This is kind of a continuation from the tip above, but it’s worth highlighting on its own. You can choose to look at album leaks as something people have to hunt for on the vast plains of the internet and try telling yourself that not many people will be willing to go through such efforts in order to hear a few songs a little earlier than everyone else, or you could choose to be realistic and reclaim a little control over how your fans access your new material by hosting your own stream of the record. Use Soundcloud or Bandcamp and, after recognizing the leak, direct all curious parties to hear the album through your link. Ask fans and friends and industry people to do the same.
Timeliness is next to godliness as far as this tip is concerned, but if you have a good relationship with any music writers this may be the perfect time to call in a last minute favor. Getting a blog or site to host your premiere ensures even more people with social influence will be directing fans to content you essentially control. You can survive without their help, but if it’s available to you then you might as well use it.
5. Make the album available for purchase as soon as possible and consider offering it for a discounted price.
There may be two weeks until your physical product comes in for pre-orders, but if your album leaked before you got out of bed today you better do everything in your power to make it available for sale before sundown. Services like Bandcamp makes this type of immediate change incredibly easy.
You will also want to consider discounting the price of a digital download of your album for a short amount of time. It may seem counter-intuitive to ask for even less money on an album you’re already losing sales on due to piracy, but lowering the cost may actually increase the chances of fans supporting the album financially. Most people pirate because it’s both affordable and incredibly simple. You cannot beat free, but you can combat it by lowering the price of your downloads, or even making the record available on a pay-what-you-want basis and appealing to fans to contribute whatever they feel they are able.
You can also take things one step further and offer a discount on all your remaining pre-order packages. How much to offer will vary based on your overall costs, but any amount will help to further entice listeners on the fence over whether or not they should purchase an album all their friends have received for free.
As an example of someone taking back control of their release, please take a quick look at this message released by our friends at Topshelf Records following the leak of You Blew It’s new album near the beginning of 2014:
Wow. The response to yesterday’s premiere has been overwhelmingly awesome — thank you!
I noticed a ton of “leaked” copies of the record being shared everywhere within an hour of that premiere going up, though, and just wanted to post about that. We don’t mind that, at all. We get it, and that doesn’t bother us — we’re excited people want to share this. However, when “this” is a 92kbps 2003-Myspace-dot-com-era-quality-sounding rip of a stream, we get kinda bummed how that’s what people might be hearing and sharing. So, we’ve now sent out the high quality downloads to everyone who pre-ordered the record. We’re not gonna be download cops about it — share it, enjoy it, tell your friends about it — sing it when you see them on tour this month.
This messaging recognizes the leak, then immediately directs everyone’s attention back to the band and what the band has going on in the immediate future. It’s about the band’s stream of the album, the band’s store with pre-order options, and the band’s upcoming tour dates. Bring the focus back to the you and your music. Don’t let pirates steal the spotlight.
It’s worth mentioning that those who choose to put their album on sale early will have a few additional decisions to make, including whether or not to distribute album downloads to those who pre-ordered the album prior to the leak. There are pros and cons to both sides, so the best advice we can offer is figure out what is best for your audience and run with it.
6. Be proactive in fighting music pirates. Submit take down requests and whatever else needs to be done in order to keep your music away from leak sites.
Fighting an album leak is forever an uphill battle. It only takes one person to leak an album on one site or social media service before files begin spreading like the common cold across the web. You may not be able to completely erase every trace of your early album leak from the net, but with time, dedication, and a little help from Google you can make it a lot more difficult for pirates to locate your stolen material.
First, set up notifications through you favorite digital alert service to notify you anytime someone mentions your album online. You will (hopefully) be inundate with news and reviews most the time, but this service will also peak up leak blogs/sites running your album. You may also want to search for your band name and album title, both together and separately, with the phrases ‘zip’ and ‘rar.’ As soon as you find a link you need removed, contact the blog owner, as well as the site hosting the file download (Mediafire, Sharebeast, Zippyshare, etc.) and politely request that your content be removed with the help of a DCMA take down letter. Then use this form and ask Google to remove links from search. It may take a few days, but most people and sites will comply with your requests. As soon as one goes down, however, another one or three will likely appear. Keep pushing. Keep fighting.
You can also ask fans to join in your anti-piracy efforts. Lady Gaga, for example, called on fans in 2013 to report any early leaks of her Artpop album, and thousands sent Mother Monster links in response. It did not plug the leak entirely, but it delayed the majority of music fans from hearing the material until much closer to the intended release date, and in doing so forged a stronger connection between Gaga and her fans.
7. Live to create another day
When all the take downs have been issued and you have told the story of how the leak impacted your plans for the future to the last blogger and fan willing to listen the time will come when you simply need to move on with your career and begin working towards the future. There are more songs to be written, more albums to be recorded, and more many more shows to be performed. People all over the world now have access to your music and no matter what happens from this point forward that will never change. The discovery of your art is going to continue, every day, week, and month for as long as there are people online with a passion for music. There is something beautiful about that, even if it is also financially frustrating, and it offers a rare opportunity to connect with others that many never receive. Make the most of it and forge ahead. Live to create another day.
