Is It Better To Leak Your Own Music?

A couple people have sent in the news about how Simon Cowell apparently has called in the police to go after hackers who supposedly hacked into a computer at his record company and leaked a new song by a singer named Leona Lewis. It’s now clear what evidence there is that there was an actual hack, rather than the leak coming from somewhere else, but that seems besides the point. If the computers were broken into, then it seems fair enough to go after those who did the hacking. Read on…

Miami based Producers Cool & Dre also way in on “leaked” records….

As well as looking after their beats and archives, Cool & Dre are scrupulous about keeping track of where their tracks are in the studio. The ‘leaked’ mix is becoming either a problem or a guerilla marketing tool; C&D prefer that it remain the latter, particularly since they are now label moguls themselves. “The whole download game has to do with control of the material, and to control it you have to keep track of it,” says Cool. “Usually, you don’t want leaks on a high-profile artist, though sometimes it can also be a good thing, if you’re in control of it. A download about a week before the album release date can be a good time to do it on purpose. ‘New York’ got leaked and it was at a thousand spins before the album came out. But when we’re in the studio, we try not to give copies of anything to anyone, including the artist. Sometimes the clients are the ones who leak it the worst, leaving it in a car or someone’s house or through a ‘friend’. At the end of each session, we back up to DVD and clean off the hard drive before we leave. You gotta control the track.” Read on…