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What To Do If Your Album Leaks

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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.

As always, we’re for damn sure gonna make the record available for download at the more than reasonable price of $5 on bandcamp and as affordable as we can on physical formats (with an immediate download on FLAC, ALAC, MP3 320, MP3 VBR or AAC 256). Also, if you’ve got an iTunes gift card for the holidays and don’t know what the hell to buy with it, well, the record’s for sale there too.

If you haven’t listened to the album yet, you can stream the premiere on Pitchfork now.

Thanks, you guys.

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.

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In case you had any doubt, piracy still matters.

Many people believe the age of streaming has done such a good job of providing free and legal means to access music that piracy no longer makes a major impact on an artist’s career. Our experience in promotional distribution over the last eight year has taught us the opposite is true, and the reason for this are numerous.

For starters, the royalties made off streaming services is nowhere near the kind of returns musicians (and their labels) would see from actual music sales. Of course those, be it physical album sales or digital downloads, continue to decline as use of streaming services rise. Royalty rates do seem to be improving with time, but not all genres are thriving in the digital space. Country and rock in particular are struggling, as more artists have to rethink their release strategies to match the ever-present demand for more content.

When new records don’t produce money, the ability artists (and their labels) have to promote the record declines. Everything from touring, to merchandise, advertising, and all forms general marketing require money up front. Many artists still rely on strong early sales in order to afford their next business move. When that money doesn’t come in, careers stall – some before they even really begin, and many never recover.

The belief that people who steal music and end up loving a particular release will eventually support the artist responsible has long been proven false. There is some conversion, yes, but most consumers who rely largely on piracy for access to new music rarely evolve into reliable shoppers. Most cannot be bothered to pay $10 a month for access to millions of songs via subscription streaming services, so why would they think your single, 10 or 12 track album is worth anything at all?

This brings us to the chart at the top of this post. Created from a report commissioned by UMG in 2015, the chart above reflects what many people far smarter than you or I believe would happen in a post-piracy world. This is how it works:

In the first year after piracy, consumers would be highly resistant to paying because they have a long-standing expectation of free. As time moved on, people would start to give in, and that resistance would gradually move towards greater payments in the form of premium Spotify subscriptions, increased vinyl purchases, and even download and CD buys. 

Something else that might happen: The end of ‘freemium’ service. Streaming subscription platforms like Spotify and Apple Music do not have to allow consumers trial access to their libraries. The idea of free access was a direct response to rampant piracy, offering a cost-free alternative that ultimately still helped artists get paid while maintaining the expectation that music be free. Without piracy that expectation would begin to fade, ultimately leading to increased sales across the board.

Whether or not a concrete solution to piracy exists in our immediate future is another question altogether. At Haulix we are working every day to make that dream a reality, and we’ve come a long way, but there are still more developments needed. With your help we know will get there, and from that point we will build a new music industry that is more resilient than ever.

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Why using a single link to share your unreleased music is a horrible idea

With the ease of access to recording equipment and the internet it is now easier than ever for anyone who possesses any interest in music to market themselves as a musician. Click on almost any tag on a streaming service like Soundcloud or Audiomack and you will find page after page of aspiring stars from all walks of life. Technology has lowered the bar for what it takes to be a musician to the ground floor, and as a result the fight for attention of any kind is harder than ever.

There are many approaches to getting heard, but one time-tested strategy of the digital age is to first appeal to the influential bloggers and digital voices whose opinion on new music will reach consumers your boosted Facebook posts can only dream of. Algorithms may create great playlists, but the digital age has yet to produce a better platform for discovering artists than trusted sources with a vast knowledge of music most consumers simply do not have the time to research or enjoy.

You need the press and the press, as crazy as it may sound, needs you. Music writers are ALWAYS on the lookout for the next song that will change their lives so that they can then change the lives of their audience (who, in turn, become your audience).

You also need to protect your music, which is why services like Haulix exist to make promoting your new and unreleased songs to the entertainment industry at large a simple and secure process. Haulix makes it easy to send unique, watermarked links to your new and unreleased music to everyone on your press list in a matter of minutes. You can even customized the email invitation and the streaming page itself to better reflect your personal brand.

But why do you need a unique link for every writers and industry professional when a private Soundcloud link has worked for so many others in the past? While it’s true Soundcloud makes it possible to hide streams from the general public, there are a myriad of ways people can still access and download your music. If that happens and your music winds up leaking you will have no way to uncover who 

is responsible for the leak. Someone you never intended your unreleased music to reach may have gained access through a writer you thought you could trust and within minutes your hard work could be available, for free, in perpetuity.

By using Haulix you can send as many links as you need, all at once, in the same amount of time it would take for you to generate and distribute an insecure streaming link. If anything happens we will help you find the person responsible and do what we are able to ensure they never leak music again.

You can try one-month of Haulix for free by signing up today.

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One common mistake that could cost your band thousands

Now is the best time in history to be a music fan. The era we live in is the first where music is available everywhere, all the time, for only a few bucks a month. You can use YouTube and enjoy millions of songs for free and artists STILL get paid. It’s incredible.

Despite the rise of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, digital piracy has continued to be a thorn in the side of the entertainment industry. The amount of media pirated in 2016 was double the amount stolen in 2008, and it is expected to double again by 2020.

The majority of albums that leak ahead of their release date find their way online due to careless promotional tactics on the part of the artist or their team. Dozens, possibly even hundreds of copies of a record are shared with members of the press, radio, and industry at large before an album is released to the public. Somewhere along the line the album reaches someone who decides to share it with a third party, and that is all it takes for countless sales and streams to be lost forever.

In an age where artists can make money for every stream of their music across countless platforms there is no reason to risk the loss of a single penny to piracy. Protect your music and easily share it with the industry at large by joining Haulix today.

Haulix is a digital distribution platform built specifically to enable the advance promotion of new and unreleased music without the fear of piracy. Their platform makes it incredibly easy to upload, watermark, distribute, and track your new release.

Within a matter of minutes you can be sharing your music with fully customizable emails and promotional pages without having to worry whether or not someone will choose to leak your material online. You can try Haulix for free for the next 30 days by visiting their official website and choosing the subscription that best fits your needs.

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There is no such thing as ‘noble’ piracy

Most of us think of the period of time we’re just getting away from as the holiday season, but for fans of piracy the stretch between late November and early January has another name: Screener season.

Every year, without fail, studios and PR agencies around Hollywood mail hundreds of physical screeners to critics and industry professionals around the globe for end of the year award consideration. They do this because many groups, including those who vote for the Golden Globes and Academy Awards, refuse to go to a theater to see every individual release in contention. It’s a necessary evil from a marketing standpoint, and every year this process results in dozens of films being made available online far in advance of their planned digital release.

This year has been a little different. Where nearly a dozen titles were made available through torrent sites in the days before Christmas 2015 there were next to no pirated screeners to be found when Santa Claus visited a chimney near you last week. The reason for this, or at least the one we’ve been provided, seems to be that pirates have started to realize the damage their ‘work’ can cause.

A message posted last week from from Hive-CM8, the infamous group behind many screeners leaks in the past, on their HDcam rip the new film Assassin’s Creed reads:

“Yes, still here and kicking, we had to have a break for some time. Bet you are waiting for screeners, yep why not? We were definitely not in the mood to make the same mistakes as last year with screeners before Christmas or cinema release date.”

The original message can be viewed below:

The ‘mistake’ Hive seems to be referring to is how the leak of an unreleased film that cost millions to produce can hurt how much money they film inevitably makes, which in turn makes those in power work harder than ever to bring Hive members to justice. In other words, they do not want to upset Hollywood by leaking things before they are released, but they do want to continue leaking high quality copies of films that are still in theaters.

Let’s be real: The mistake Hive members are making is the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials. This group of anonymous leakers is no more ‘noble’ than a common criminal. Piracy is bad for films, plain and simple. If they really wanted to make a positive difference the members of Hive would dissolve their group and find more productive hobbies. 

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Stream ripping has lead to a surge in piracy, but Haulix has a solution

Bad news on the piracy front. According to a new report from MUSO, stream ripping from sites like YouTube and Soundcloud has lead to a surge in music piracy.

In the first nine months of this year – that’s January 1 to September 30 – there were 7.2bn visits to copyright-infringing stream-ripping sites around the globe. That is a 60% rise over the same period in 2015. 

The websites responsible for allowing such rampant piracy to be carried out are numerous, but none are more well known than YouTube-mp3.org. The owner of that site was actually sued by all three major labels last month. This has not caused the site’s competitors to run and hide however, which is disappointing.

There is good news. Well, good news for those of you who use Haulix to promote your new and unreleased music.

Haulix uses a custom system for injecting watermarks that extends to streams hosted on our service. If someone rips the audio from a Haulix stream, or from a YouTube video using a watermarked track taken from Haulix, our system can pull the watermarks from those rips and identify the person responsible for the leak. Pirates can try to transcode and re-upload files they originally received from Haulix, but the watermarks will still remain.

We wish we could say we had a solution to ending rip services like YouTube-mp3, but until that time our watermarks can help identify music pirates and ensure they are never allowed access to music again. 

Sign up today and experience the Haulix difference for yourself.

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BANDS: If you do not make your new music easily available online someone else will

This is going to sound a little crazy at first, but the availability of your material online is just as important to curving piracy in 2016 as the need to actively combat the proliferation of links through DCMA Takedown Notices. That may seem counter-intuitive, as the spread of your unreleased material is typically not something you want easily available to anonymous people online, but there comes a point in every album promotion cycle where the exact opposite becomes true. Allow me to explain…

Let’s pretend for a moment that we are all in the same band. Our new album, which we have been working on for the past several months, is due out in the near future. Pre-orders have been going strong for a while now, but with a new tour starting 10 days before the album’s release we’ve decided that we will have copies of the record available for sale at every date of the run. This means that, for about a week and a half, anyone who attends a concert of ours will be able to purchase our new album early, which on paper seems like a good deal for everyone involved: Fans get music early, and we begin seeing an early return on our creative efforts.

There is a catch, however, and that is the fact that anyone with early access to our album also has the ability to leak that record online. 10 days may not seem like a long time when you step back and think about a career in music as a whole, but in the world of piracy it’s equal to a lifetime. Kanye West’s latest album The Life of Pablo, for example, leaked online before many people even knew where to find the record’s official Tidal stream. Within 24 hours more than 100,000 people had downloaded the original leak, and countless more had shared their download with family/friends. By Friday of that same week more than half a million people had illegally downloaded the record, with tens of thousands more following suit the next day.

Our band might not have the same size audience as Kanye West, but our album could suffer a similar fate if we do not take steps to curve the proliferation of illegal downloads online. The first round of defense is, of course, asking fans to wait and purchase the album. The second, and honestly – most important of all – is that we MAKE THE ALBUM AVAILABLE ONLINE.

The key to winning the battle against piracy, especially over the longterm, is taking whatever steps you can to make your music available to fans. This includes, but is not limited to: Soundcloud album stream, Spotify stream, Rdio, Pandora, and Bandcamp. As soon as a physical version of your album is available for sale you need to have a digital stream available and ready to be shared with press and fans alike. By offering a free and completely legal way to access music fans have less reason to even look for leaks, let alone download them. Why should they? Streaming is the number one way people experience music today, so if streaming is an option for your fans they won’t feel the need to engage in piracy. Everything they want is already available, it’s free as well.

A recent report showed that almost ¼ of an album’s total sales happen BEFORE the scheduled release date. Leaks can help sales, but more often than not they have the opposite effect. Streams on the other hand, can encourage consumers to purchase the album, as well as aide in promoting tours and other upcoming events. By hosting the stream yourself the power is entirely in your hands, which is something most artists rarely experience in the modern business.

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Haulix Weekly Update #131: “This better be about pizza”

Hello, everyone! We’re a day late posting this update, but rest assured that all is well at Haulix HQ. We have some big changes on the horizon, and starting with this post we are going to reveal some of what lies in store. Before we get there however, we would like to begin this recap with a song we have had on repeat all week long. Check this out:

As I mentioned above, each and every weekend we like to take a brief break from our regularly scheduled programming to update and reflect on everything happening at Haulix HQ. We are far more than a music blog, as many of you already know, and posts like this give us an opportunity to share more our efforts with all of you.

Development news:

The long-teased Haulix platform update is so close. In fact, by the end of this month we will all be enjoying what we have dubbed ‘Project Falcon’ in full. We don’t want to give away the exact launch date just yet, but know it’s coming much sooner than you think.

Blog news:

Activity on the blog was up this week, but content creation is still taking a back seat to work on the new platform. We are quite proud of the material shared as of late, so please take a few moments to experience everything we have prepared for you. The best way to do that, at least in our opinion, is by scrolling through our archives. Enjoy.

That is all the news we have to share this week. Have a safe and productive weekend. We will see you back here on Sunday for a brand new job board.

Best,

Haulix

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Music piracy is worse now than ever before, but there is hope

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.

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Anti-Piracy Tip: Research every promo request, even if it comes from the artist

Journalism is a tough game, and anyone who works in it will tell you that is sugarcoating the reality of the situation. There are far more people seeking paid work in writing than there are positions available, and as a result the competition for access to album advances, concert tickets, photo passes, and the like is extremely tough. People will do anything they can to not only get the attention of publicists, but to set themselves apart as someone whose words and influence can greatly benefit a certain artist or project. We encourage you to do the same as well, but we draw the line when people start to lie.

Yes, in the age of Google and global interconnectivity there are still some people who believe they can get ahead in business by pretending to be something or someone they are not. The image at the top of this post shows a screenshot from an email a publicist forwarded our way. Their PR company was contacted by someone named Molly who claimed to be a writer looking for tickets to cover an upcoming concert. To confirm their story, the PR firm in question requested that the writer send along an example of their work, and the screenshot above shows what they received. At first glance, everything looks legit, but that is not the case. A quick google search using any sentence(s) from this post will show you the original article was not written by ‘Molly,’ but rather by Jennifer Moore for Sound Scene Express (proof). 

Once the PR firm discovered Molly’s lie, they reached out to confront her/them. Molly, in turn, fell silent and was never heard from again. 

People impersonating others to gain access is certainly not a new concept, but it’s hard to live a life where you question everyone you meet. Publicists are inundated with dozens, if not hundreds, of requests every day. Most struggle to find time to read everything, so it’s easy to understand why many do not think to further research the people who send requests and provide evidence of their work – but it is something that must be done. Whether the request comes from a new writer or someone claiming to be connected to the artist in question, it is incredibly important that PR and labels confirm they are who they say they are. If not, leaks will happen and the wrong person will be blamed, which is not good for anyone.

We’re not saying to stop trusting people, but we do believe you need to confirm new contacts are who they claim to be prior to sending advances or granting access to live events. It may require more work, but a little extra effort is far better than a leak that causes irreparable damage to your artist, as well as your reputation in PR.

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