Remember the promises made by executives promoting the debut of streaming services? Ten years ago can feel like a lifetime in the age of the internet, but if you try hard, you may recall people in power hailing the rise of streaming as the death of piracy. After all, why would someone steal an album or a movie when they can rent or buy one from the comfort of their own home? Why risk penalty when you can avoid illegal behavior for just a few dollars a month?
If we’ve learned anything in the last decade it’s that piracy won’t be eradicated anytime soon. In fact, since 2008, the amount of media pirated annually has more than doubled. Over hundreds of millions of people use services such as Spotify and Netflix around the world, yet piracy persists. Maybe it always will (we sure hope not).
Anyone claiming piracy is not an issue can now be shown further evidence that it is thanks to a new report from Canadian broadband management company Sandvine. The business, which tracks and studies internet usage, is known for releasing region-specific information regarding internet traffic. Their latest release focuses on the global internet community, and the results are quite surprising.
When all traffic from sources worldwide is combined, Netflix comes out as the clear winner with 13.75% of the total traffic share. The streaming giant is followed by HTTPS Media data (12.25%) and YouTube (10.51%) respectively.
BitTorrent comes in fifth place with 4.10% of all Internet traffic globally, which is mostly driven by the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) and APAC (Asia-Pacific) regions. BitTorrent is also responsible for roughly 22% of all upstream traffic. That’s nearly ¼ of the total information sent from computers to their network.
By comparison, Netflix accounts for just 15% of all downstream traffic (data received by computers).
“As expected, the top four applications are all video, and also not surprisingly, BitTorrent is fifth overall – strongly boosted by the utter dominance on the upstream in EMEA and APAC,” Sandvine’s Cam Cullen notes.
“This is a pretty significant number since downstream traffic is an order of magnitude larger than the upstream traffic totals worldwide.”
BitTorrent is not as popular in the United States as it once was, but global traffic for the service has been on the rise throughout 2018. There are ongoing arguments at the highest levels of entertainment over how to address the persistence of the service, as well as all other piracy outlets, but no meaningful solution has been found.
For musicians, the best way to prevent piracy is to protect their music with services such as Haulix, which provides secure and customizable digital promotion for talent at all levels of the business. For more information, as well as access to a one-month trial, visit haulix.com today.
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.
Want to know what I think the worst part of my job is? The easy answer is a day when I get a bunch of personal and hateful things heaved at me anonymously. But that’s more of a byproduct of the job, not actually a part of it. The worst part of my job is when I am sitting online looking at any one of my aggregation feeds and I see something that I know is a “leak” of pertinent band information. Sometimes it’ll be Amazon or iTunes that has prematurely posted album information, sometimes it’ll be a tweet about a new song title from a small market DJ, or even, worst of all in my opinion, an actual song leak. I’ve talked about these tough circumstances before, most recently on episode 42 of the AP.net Podcast; however, I think that it’s worth expanding upon even more.
A large portion of this matter comes down to how I see my job. What is it that I do? Am I just a way to put out press releases when a band or label declares them ready for dissemination? Am I a “journalist”? Am I a blogger? By and large I view myself as a news aggregator and occasional columnist; someone offering an opinion on a variety of topics. I fear that if our website turns into just another place to post press releases we will have lost a part of what makes us special and loved. We will have lost what I believe is valuable to labels and bands in the first place: the very fact that people read our website. Some publications choose to value the bands’ or publicists’ wish and will at all costs. I understand that position and respect it — as I believe it is theirs individually to make. I, however, have to make the choice as a writer where I value our readers in this equation. I know that I don’t have full trust in certain publications because I can’t be sure that they’re writing for and respecting me, the reader, when they post. If I think a publication would pull an unflattering story or relevant information — I can’t trust them. And with that, I wouldn’t trust their opinion on music or their reporting on news stories. And, therefore, I use myself as a yardstick for the kind of reader I believe reads our site. What would I want to read, what would I expect, what standard do I hold the writers I follow to? These are the questions I ask myself every day.
I am well aware you may have different thoughts on how you would write online, I want to make it clear that I respect that as well — I’m not trying to say my way is the only way, or the right way, or even the best way. I’m simply trying to elucidate my reasoning and where I’ve landed at this stage in my career. I revisit my logic frequently, especially if I know it has bummed out a band I greatly respect.
Let’s look at it this way: If our core readers visit Twitter, or Facebook, or Tumblr, or another website similar to ours, and they have already seen some information by the time it’s “officially announced” — it has become “old news” to that audience. Giving people old news they’ve already read is antithetical to my mission statement. On the internet, yesterday’s news is virtually synonymous with nonexistence. However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t put a pit in my stomach sometimes when we have to make a tough call. At the time when this information spreads to an official “source” like iTunes, I get stressed out. Did the band plan for it to just come out like this? Was there supposed to be an announcement? Why wasn’t this coordinated? What happened? And in a few minutes I have to start confirming information, preparing a post, and making the call for if it goes up or not. In this case, we posted it. Then I sit there and watch my email hoping that I don’t get one from the label asking us to pull the post down (or worse something directly from a band member). I hate those emails. I know it comes with the territory and I don’t hide from it. I really do believe the label is doing their job and I respect that. I always try and let everyone involved in one of those email chains know our policy, where the information is from, where it’s sourced from, that deleting it makes it worse, and that I will update the post with any information or statement from the band they’d like. Still, it’s a very stressful scenario (and as of this writing no such email has come in this particular case).
Let’s look at the other example of the day: I’ve known the guys in Yellowcard longer than many real life friends at this point. The people I went to my first Yellowcard show with I now know as those people I sometimes see on Facebook when they post pictures with their kids. Yet, even with this history, I believe in acting in accordance to our policy and not shifting it based upon the band in question. If we’ve been told not to post something under an embargo (more details about this special case below), I absolutely will not post it. Yet, if something is out on the internet and we are not the source for it — I do believe it is my job to post about it. If that causes harm in the relationship I have with a band, I totally understand that. It’s painful to me on a personal level but my other option is to bend my policy and give special favors for certain bands and therefore censor the news that I think that our audience would like to know (in turn they would be right to seek the information elsewhere and lose trust in me). Extrapolating that to its logical conclusion, we become a website that isn’t known for having the best information about all the bands readers want — and I feel as though I have failed at my job.
I’m not unlike most people: I don’t particularly enjoy bands, or labels, or publicists, or managers, or friends being mad at me. I don’t relish the idea of someone I respect being upset with me. It’s a dance between press and “journalist” (bleh) and one that I wish I had better solutions to after years of waltzing. My lighthouse is to continually come back to the question: Who am I writing for? I’m writing for the others like me that are looking for all the latest information on bands they love — and I feel duty bound to report on the information that’s available. All in all, this leaves me with a variety of options and a set of guidelines:
Option 1
I don’t post anything at all. The information is now elsewhere on the internet and I just wait until it is “supposed” to be released. It spreads around on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and other websites. The “place” to talk about these stories is no longer AP.net — we, in turn, become more of a press release echo-chamber. The pro is that bands and labels probably like us more and the con is that our readers like us a whole lot less.
Option 2
I go rogue and post everything and anything. I post anything I hear, even if it’s embargoed or off the record. I post links to full album leaks and thumb my nose at legal. I lose respect for myself, hate my job, and quickly burn every bridge I’ve spent years building.
I see nothing good that comes from this option. I do see some sites that try and run with the full rebel/pirate mode and they seem to have a boost in popularity in the short term but few last very long. I’ve been doing this over a decade and don’t plan to quit anytime soon.
Option 3
I post the news and then remove it when asked by the band or publicist. This plays out very similar to option 1, only it also adds the wrinkle that our readers now know we are censoring newsworthy stories to some degree and that we can’t be trusted to give them the latest information about the bands they follow.
Option 4
I try to follow a set of guidelines (outlined above and below) and keep the dialogue open with bands and publicists and readers and other staff-members to make sure we are communicating every step of the way. This adds a level of transparency and hopefully trust with the reader — it lets everyone know where we stand and why. And, it keeps the conversation open for options we haven’t thought of or technology that hasn’t been invented yet. To pretend I have all the answers right now and can just follow a formula forever seems misguided at best. Mostly, I just want those that read my words to know where I’m coming from. I want them to trust me when I write something and know that I’m speaking from a position that places honesty paramount.
Album Leak Guidelines
One of the things I touched on in that podcast episode is that I will not post links to album leaks on our homepage. If a singular song leaks, I will, however, link to where it can be found. I will also immediately update that post to point toward where the song can be legally streamed or purchased the moment it’s available. This, to me, is probably the toughest call of all. I’m not specifically fond of linking to where someone can hear music if the band doesn’t want that music heard yet. At the same time, as I mentioned above, I do believe in my duty to inform our readers that a song is available to hear. I know that the band or label can normally have the sound file removed from somewhere like YouTube or Tumblr, but I am also aware that it’s sort of passing the buck. When this happens with a band I have a really great relationship with I can feel my hands get clammy and my stomach tie up in knots. This is where I have to try and be objective and realize that if I would post about the YouTube song “leak” of a band I didn’t like or consider friends, I need to be consistent in how I handle the situation with those I do.
Information About An Album / Tour Guidelines
These situations feel easier for me because it’s information and not music that is leaking. I understand a band, label, or publicist’s desire to control the information that comes out around certain big press announcements. I can empathize with all parties when they talk about how they get bummed out when information comes out before they’re ready.1This goes double when the band has had something special planned for the announcement or if they wanted to maximize the hype around information to coincide with a pre-sale or similar endeavor. I still struggle because I understand that without the bands making music, or going on tour, or being interesting to fans, we obviously don’t have a website; they are the lifeblood to the content that we cover. However, I am also cognizant of my duty to our readers: to present them with accurate and up to the minute reporting on things they are interested in reading. This is where all I’ve talked about above comes into play: I have to trust myself and my decision to write as though I’m our website’s number one fan.
Embargoes
When it comes to information that’s been embargoed, that is, given to us to post at a specific time but not before — I honor these completely. For example, I had the Yellowcard track listing before it was leaked today. Now, when something is embargoed that means I absolutely won’t be the source of the information, and I personally will not confirm something even if I know it to be true. I will present the information as “alleged” or “reported by” — and make it clear that I’m not confirming or denying the embargoed news. I am very careful about my words when I make a post on the website. If the information surfaces via another blog, or Amazon, or something that is not from us, then I will post about what has happened. This can create a weird scenario because, obviously, I wouldn’t post flat out false information. For example, I obviously knew the track listing being posted today was correct. I had not, however, seen the album artwork for Lift a Sail and made sure to note where the information was coming from, where I saw it, and that nothing was confirmed. It’s important to read how I word things because I always try to be as honest and upfront as possible about where information is coming from and what we currently know. I pick my words carefully. These situations, where information has hit the internet and I know the (embargoed) truth, are always complicated.
Off the Record
If someone tells me something off the record: I’m the only person that will ever know it. I don’t tell other staff, friends, or family. I usually will ask if this is information that can’t be attributed to the source and can be used as “background” or if it’s flat out never to be reported information. If it’s just for “background” — I’ll wait until I have multiple sources to run anything but without source attribution. I won’t give up a source, so you can either believe me or not in those situations, but my track record is pretty damn good.
When I cracked open my writing app and a beer tonight, I didn’t expect to write as much as I just did. But it feels good to have put it all down. These are the things that sit in my head and I have very few people I can discuss them with in any detail, let alone actually talk the theory behind them with. Thanks for reading if you made it this far — I venture the next long post will be about actual music.
This post was contributed to the Haulix blog by Jason Tate, founder of Chorus.fm.
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.
We spend a lot of our time discussing and working to prevent leaks. When I say leaks, I am referring to the sharing of copyrighted materials without the consent of the content creator. Eradicating that threat to artists and labels has been our one of our main goals since the very beginning, and we like to believe we have made major strides towards accomplishing that task. Today however, at least for a few minutes, we want to change our focus to another kind of leak and the response artists have when such problems arise.
Try as many artists or labels might to keep big news items a secret for as long as possible there are often leaks that out of the blue and spoil whatever promotional plan had previously been put into motion. Whether you’re planning to release a surprise album in a manner similar to Beyonce, or if you’re on the verge of revealing your biggest tour to date, there is always a pretty good chance someone outside your inner circle will beat you to the punch when it comes to sharing that information online. There are exceptions, of course, but as more and more artists try to hide big reveals until the very last minute we at Haulix have noticed a rise in the efforts made by the music community as a whole to spoil this news, if only so that someone or some site can claim to have an ‘exclusive’ others do not.
Let me be very clear: Leaking major news is not the same as breaking an ‘exclusive’ story. Every journalist or blogger worth your time knows this, even if they choose to ignore it. By choosing to act without the consent of the artist or the people working with them bloggers are making a decision that goes against the idea of cultivating a better scene for future generations, which has long been a cornerstone of alternative music. One might think understanding the problems that arise in a culture where leaks are accepted as normal would be easy for most, but a decade in the music business has taught me otherwise time and time again. There will always be people who are too selfish to fully realize or appreciate the impact their actions have on the community around them, and the best you can hope to do as an artist is to take the appropriate action when those leaks occur.
For most artists, leaks can be viewed as a double-edged sword. While it stinks that someone would ruin your promotional plan and share something without your permission, there is always a little voice in the back of a creative person’s head that says the only reason that material is being shared is because people want it so badly they’re willing to steal it. That may be a compliment to some, but even if it makes you feel those warm fuzzies we all love to host in our stomachs it also throws a wrench in your marketing efforts and, potentially, your future income.
There is a saying you may know about how once a bell has been rung there is no way to undo that action. The same theory applies to leaks, at least for the most part. Once an album, photo, or news item has found its way on the net it’s essentially impossible to stop the continued proliferation of that content online. We offer tools to our clients to help curve the rate album leaks are shared, but in cases where news items leak early there are literally no measure in place (that we are aware of) to help pull that information off the net. Even if it could be done, there would still be an untold number of people who saw the content before it disappeared, and there would be no way to track all of them down to ask them to please keep your secrets safe. Sorry, but that is just not how life in the digital age works.
When something leaks, the first thing you should do as an artist is to find a way to get that same information or content to your fans through means you control as fast as humanly possible. If a single leaks ahead of its premiere, stream the song yourself through Bandcamp or Soundcloud. You won’t be able to make fans stop seeking out the track, nor would you want to, but you can have a say in where they find the content and what kind of messaging surrounds it. The same goes for news. You can’t ask every blog to not post news item that leaks early, but you can post the same news through your social channels and, to some degree, control the conversation.
Conversation is key to promotion in the digital age. If you can control the conversation then you can have some say in the way the world engaged with your art. The best laid plans of mice and men may go awry, but as long as you’re prepared to respond the negative impact of an unplanned reveal will be minimal. Just keep your fans first, and do whatever you can to ensure they’re going through channels you create to access your content. If you can do that, and I promise that you can if you work hard, then you will forever have one less reason to fear the internet.
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 onTwitter. 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.
Yesterday afternoon, two days after their San Diego Comic-Con panel took place, Warner Bros. entertainment released the first footage from David Ayer’s upcoming adaptation of DC Comics popular Suicide Squad comic book series. This was just under forty-eight hours after incredibly low quality footage captured by fans attempting to simultaneously hide their phones spread like wildfire across the web. If you have not seen the official trailer yet, you can do so below, as I feel it’s only right to promote the film before we address the problems with how the footage was shared with the public.
Had the footage above been released with a basic press release announcing the film’s release, everyone would have rejoiced and moved on. Instead, Sue Kroll, President Worldwide Marketing and International Distribution, released a statement alongside the clip that essentially attempts to shame comics fans for doing the same thing they do every year at this event when footage is not released. Her message reads:
“Warner Bros. Pictures and our anti-piracy team have worked tirelessly over the last 48 hours to contain the Suicide Squad footage that was pirated from Hall H on Saturday. We have been unable to achieve that goal. Today we will release the same footage that has been illegally circulating on the web, in the form it was created and high quality with which it was intended to be enjoyed. We regret this decision as it was our intention to keep the footage as a unique experience for the Comic Con crowd, but we cannot continue to allow the film to be represented by the poor quality of the pirated footage stolen from our presentation.”
We would never encourage the proliferation of digital piracy in any form, but companies like Warner Bros. need to understand how fandom works in the digital age in order to properly cater to today’s youth market. The fact people share poor quality videos of unreleased footage online is a shame, and that is certainly a point worth being made. You cannot, however, hold a public screening of unreleased footage in a setting where everyone is allowed to have their smart phone, especially if that place has a long history of video piracy, and not assume some level of risk. That’s just common sense.
The worst part of it all is that Warner Bros. seems to have been aware of SDCC’s history with video piracy this entire time. Within moments of premiering the latest trailer for Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, which was screened during the same panel as the Suicide Squad footage, the studio made the same trailer available on its official YouTube channel for the world to see. If I had to guess why this happened, it may because the Comic-Con exclusive teaser for Dawn Of Justice that was screened in 2014 suffered a cell phone captured leak immediately following its premiere, but that may not been a factor at all. Whatever the case, the release of the latest Batman V Superman trailer set a precedent for the event that the studio did not follow with the other footage screened, which infuriated the throngs of online comic fans who were relying on those clips to feels as close to their favorite characters as the people able to afford the trip and time needed to get into Comic-Con’s beloved Hall H. The studio had met the demand for content once, but why not twice? The Suicide Squad film may be over a year from release, but WB has shown teasers and trailers for other properties this far out, so why not this one?
The reason studios appear at Comic-Con is to show fans of various franchises that they are not going to bastardize their beloved characters by making them into something they are not. It’s fan servicing done in the hopes of creating long term buzz for big budget projects that play a large role in a company’s financial gambles in the year(s) ahead without the expense of a large scale marketing campaign. The idea, at least in theory, is that the people who attend events like Comic-Con are the biggest fans in the world, but as the market for comics, science fictions, zombies, and fandom in general has boomed over the last decade that is no longer the case. The people on the floor at Comic-Con are simply the luckiest of the lucky fans. They were able to register for San Diego Comic-Con while the rest of us were stuck on a wait list, hoping the page would refresh before every pass was taken. They may be the biggest fans, or they may just have good connections. Either way, studios big and small need to realize that it’s a far better play to release whatever teaser footage themselves, both at Comic-Con and online, if they want to maximize reach and fan engagement.
To be fair, WB is not the only studio who has yet to learn from past encounters with digital pirates during fan-centric events. Fox, another studio with major properties to promote at Comic-Con, also refused to post footage of their latest properties. Though fan filmed footage of trailers for both Deadpool and X-Men: Apocalypse have found their way online, the studio remains quiet. Marvel, whose films were absent at Comic-Con this year, suffered multiple footage leaks following their Phase Three announcement event in Los Angeles last fall. Proper versions of that footage remained unavailable for a long time, but some has since been released (as part of Avengers: Age Of Ultron).
Studios need to realize that it’s not only fans who want this footage anymore, but legitimate news outlets as well. Every major entertainment reporter may be on-site in San Diego, but everyone knows posting a video of new footage is always better than writing about footage no one will see for weeks, if not months. The ‘X-Men’ footage mentioned above, which was leaked online a few hours after the Fox panel ended, was spotted on sites like Yahoo, The Wrap and Business Insider, though the clips were later removed. Still, these are legitimate news outlets posted cell phone captured video of unreleased footage for no reason other than the overwhelming demand for such content to be shared online. It’s as if sharing this material has become commonplace, and that is a very dangerous thought to entertain.
If studios wanted our advice we would tell them the same thing we tell anyone in music who tells us they suffered from a leak, and that is to find the fastest way to control the conversation. When low quality bootlegs are the first way fans engage with a studio’s new film, the studio itself has no say in the experience the fans have when viewing their content. They don’t control quality, supporting text, or even who has the quote/unquote ‘exclusive,’ but if they release a proper HD cut of the footage themselves the tables turn back in their favor. By sharing the footage when demand is already at an all-time high, as it is during Comic-Con weekend, Warner Bros.-or any other studio-can maximize their ability to hook fans early and generate buzz that, hopefully, will only continue to build in the many months leading up to the film’s release.
At the end of the day, you just can’t have it both ways. You cannot hope to build fan excitement for a high profile property by screening footage in a room open to the general public and not expect someone to share it with someone who isn’t in that room. Our culture today is defined by our ability to share seemingly everything we experience, often in real time. Until studios understand that fans will always find a way to share this content with other fans and stop scolding the people they are trying to get into theaters there will continue to be leaks. If you want to generate buzz from the diehard fans through sharing footage you need to make that footage available to everyone. It’s the simple. Just as life finds a way even in the harshest of environments, fans will find a way to get footage to other fans even if a sign or two told them to put their cell phones away.
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 onTwitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.
Copyright theft has been a crime for a very long time, but its enforcement in the digital age is increasingly rare. Services like Haulix exist to not only help artists and labels protect their releases, but also to aide in the battle against piracy. We have many state-of-the-art tools to help our clients in the war against digital thieves, but unfortunately not every artist and label can claim they have Haulix fighting on their side. Some have no measures to battle piracy in place at all, and as a result there are numerous albums that still find their way to public ahead of their scheduled release date. Now, for the first time practically ever, someone is making sure one pirate never gets the itch to leak music again.
Late last year, songs from Madonna’s latest album were unceremoniously leaked before the album itself was even announced. Madonna swore she would find the person responsible, and with a little help from the FBI, as well as Israeli Police forces, she did just that. According to Consequence Of Sound, Ari Lederman of Tel Aviv was arrested for, and found guilty of computer trespassing, copyright infringement, prohibited secret monitoring, and obstructing investigation. Court documents obtained by The Hollywood Reporter claim Lederman had hacked into the cloud accounts of several associates of Madonna as well as her manager, and had in fact previously stolen a song from Madonna in 2012, which he sold rather than leaking himself.
For all of this, Lederman was sentenced to 14 months in prison. He’s also been fined NIS 15,000 (which equates to $4,000 US).
As far as we know this is the first time in a long while that someone has been sentenced to prison for pirating music. Though this specific instance involves the theft of an unannounced release, it’s not impossible to imagine a world where people who leak albums even a few weeks before its release could face real world penalties for their online crimes. Comment below and let us know your thoughts on this story.
