Leaking albums on purpose?

GT2000

GT2000

Member
May 7, 2008
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Vancouver, Canada
I'm starting to think record companies leak albums on purpose.

Look at Opeth.
Watershed leaks months before its official release date...

....and yet sales have been impressive. Cracking the U.S. top-25 is no mean feat for a death metal band from Stockholm... :kickass:

Think about it:
- I bet most of you have 'owned' Watershed since early spring - yet you still rushed out on June 3 to buy your 'official' copy

- How hard can it be for Roadrunner to keep wraps on an album? If they really cared, they wouldn't ship hundreds of advance copies to music journalists around the world. That's practically BEGGING for a leak.

Obviously, they don't care - they know fans are going to buy the album anyway. Maybe these 'leaks' are just part of their overall marketing strategy?

What do you think?:err:
 
I should also say the new album from Daylight Dies is fucking amazing.

I will definitely buy it when it is finally 'released' - in two weeks...
 
Well surely, if it is part of their marketing strategy, they sure as hell wouldn't fess up to it.
 
GT2000 said:
- How hard can it be for Roadrunner to keep wraps on an album? If they really cared, they wouldn't ship hundreds of advance copies to music journalists around the world. That's practically BEGGING for a leak.
Click to expand...

It's a tough dilemma. You have to promote the album prior to the release, but at the same time it's bound to get leaked.

Of course handing out promos is part of RR's promotion strategy, Opeth simply isn't a big enough name to have private listening sessions with music journalists. Big names like Metallica can just have those kind of sessions and liquor up the reporters to get great reviews. Anyone remember the reviews before St. Anger came out? ...Then everyone actually heard the album :puke:
 
Well, as far as I know Opeth had listening sessions with journalists - but they couldn't afford the liquor :loco:
 
Which do you think costs more:
- Flying in top-tiered music journalists from around the world for an official album unveiling
OR
- Leaving the barn door widen open and watching helplessly as tens of thousands of copies scatter like so many leaves

I don't buy in to the whining. Those illegal copies aren't lost revenue. They're marketing vehicles...
 
I have to agree with you. It seems that every sign points to leaks being on purpose these days. But if you look at a band like Opeth, one who doesn't feel the need to "please" the people who review records, Roadrunner Records will probably save money and just have an "accidental" leak.

Plus, I'm sure Mikael knows we'd buy almost anything Opeth to support him.:lol:
 
GT2000 said:
I'm starting to think record companies leak albums on purpose.

Look at Opeth.
Watershed leaks months before its official release date...

....and yet sales have been impressive. Cracking the U.S. top-25 is no mean feat for a death metal band from Stockholm... :kickass:

Think about it:
- I bet most of you have 'owned' Watershed since early spring - yet you still rushed out on June 3 to buy your 'official' copy

- How hard can it be for Roadrunner to keep wraps on an album? If they really cared, they wouldn't ship hundreds of advance copies to music journalists around the world. That's practically BEGGING for a leak.

Obviously, they don't care - they know fans are going to buy the album anyway. Maybe these 'leaks' are just part of their overall marketing strategy?

What do you think?:err:
Click to expand...

1) they ship hundreds of promo albums in order to generate expectative from the listeners, reviewers tell they love the album, and we all start to get anxious.
2)They've watermarked all the promo albums, that's why the album leaked months after everybody got the promo albums. RR could sue anybody who leaked it, and nobody wanted to try.
Nobody knows from where it got leaked.

So, you're wrong.
 
Why leaking is not (typically) on purpose:
Explain why you would leak albums and then prosecute people for downloading it.

Granted, a lot of good reasons for why they WOULD leak it are listed here. But that would be evidence for why they'd leak it a day, 2 days, maybe a week tops, before the release date. Not months.

EDIT: Yeah, didn't even touch on watermarking promo copies. Each one is unique, so all anyone needs to do is download the leak, compare with the list of who has what copy, and that journalist is fried.
 
GT2000 said:
I'm starting to think record companies leak albums on purpose.

Look at Opeth.
Watershed leaks months before its official release date...

....and yet sales have been impressive. Cracking the U.S. top-25 is no mean feat for a death metal band from Stockholm... :kickass:

Think about it:
- I bet most of you have 'owned' Watershed since early spring - yet you still rushed out on June 3 to buy your 'official' copy

- How hard can it be for Roadrunner to keep wraps on an album? If they really cared, they wouldn't ship hundreds of advance copies to music journalists around the world. That's practically BEGGING for a leak.

Obviously, they don't care - they know fans are going to buy the album anyway. Maybe these 'leaks' are just part of their overall marketing strategy?

What do you think?:err:
Click to expand...

1. Go work for a record label. Then you can freely shove your foot directly up your ass or mouth. Your choice. 99% of labels try as hard as they can to stop the album from leaking. Labels want advance press, but they don't want to simply give away an investment. That's really what all this is. However... It is an inevitability at this point that albums leak unless no one -- journalists, radio, distributors, manufacturers, outside label people close to the label, etc. -- gets to hear it until street date. Which is highly unlikely.

2. Begging for a leak? That's dumb. The idea is people who get advance music are entrusted. People break that trust when they share advance music. Just because you can leak something doesn't mean you should.
 
Victorialand said:
1. Go work for a record label. Then you can freely shove your foot directly up your ass or mouth. Your choice. 99% of labels try as hard as they can to stop the album from leaking. Labels want advance press, but they don't want to simply give away an investment. That's really what all this is. However... It is an inevitability at this point that albums leak unless no one -- journalists, radio, distributors, manufacturers, outside label people close to the label, etc. -- gets to hear it until street date. Which is highly unlikely.
Click to expand...

Just curious, why can't the journalists, radio, distributors, manufacturers etc. hear it after the release date? Why do they need to hear it before? Can't the advertising occur after the release?
 
hibernal_dream said:
Just curious, why can't the journalists, radio, distributors, manufacturers etc. hear it after the release date? Why do they need to hear it before? Can't the advertising occur after the release?
Click to expand...

They want to drum up as much excitement ahead of the release date as possible so that everyone is psyched for the day it comes out and rushed out to buy it on the same day (or pre-orders it of course). The number of sales on the first day or week are very important to them, though to be honest I'm not entirely sure why, but I can imagine that they want to sell as many copies in as short a space of time as possible and the way to do that is to hype it up before it comes out. Same as with films the way they release teasers first, then slightly longer trailers, and so on, to build anticipation so that everyone rushed out on the release date.

This is also a reason why I think leaks are bad, for us as well as them. Too often by the time a highly anticipated album, such as the new Opeth record, is properly released, everyone's heard it and talked about it to death and the people who've waited to buy it legitimately are left in the dust. As for whether they do it deliberately, there's been a lot of occasions recently where bands have had their album streamed on their myspace page or something ahead of the release, which to me seems to be a way of preventing people from downloading leaks. I've heard of a similar thing with software manufacturers deliberately releasing cracks, but that's because their software is so expensive that they know that there are people who can't afford it but will make for future customers. Doesn't make sense at all for record companies.
 
this is the album that really got me into Opeth and yes i heard it before its release, if the quality is this good then im going get the album and support the band in question and its also got me into other bands i would never have heard of before.
 
The best way to avoid leaks is to do what Tool did for 10,000 Days. No advance copies were sent at all. They didn't care what journalists had to say to influence the first week sales. And guess what? The album sold just fine. When an album is highly anticipated, fans will buy it as soon as it comes out.
 
Well 10,000 Days still leaked somehow, but Tool are a band who can basically do whatever the hell they like. Apart from the fact that I think they're all pretty well off and don't need to make money from their music, they also already have a cult following who will buy their albums and attend their shows without any publicity required. Most bands can't do that. It has been tried by a couple of others bands, not sending out press copies, but I don't know how well that has worked.
 
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