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This Morning NPR’s Frannie Kelley reported for Morning Edition on the growing habit of independent artists and record labels to leak tracks of their albums before final release. Kelley reports that, despite appearances, these leaks are simply part of a greater marketing strategy that labels have adopted in order to adapt to the changing climate in the music marketplace.
“2010 was the year the song leak was co-opted.” She writes, “Rather than keeping all their songs under lock and key until the intended release date, major labels and independents alike now give out a taste of their product, almost as a matter of course. These days, when you get something for free on the Internet, you were probably supposed to.”
She quotes Ever Kipp, a veteran of publicity campaigns for Barsuk Records and for the group Phantogram who have seen tremendous successes throughout 2010. Kipp says, “It’s become standard practice – and more important than ever – to distribute content strategically in advance of a record release or run of tour dates… It takes a lot to capture and hold consumers attention.”
It seems “everybody’s doing it” – leaking singles for limited amounts of time to create buzz for an album release or an upcoming tour – the standard understanding in 2010 has been adopted that if you want to “get some,” labels need to “give some.”
Across genres, the entire industry is becoming smarter – trying to artificially create a demand in a market that is overloaded with downloadable mp3’s of music produced and recorded by artists from Hollywood to Helsinki. Apparent in the recent Wikileaks Scandal, the power of internet leaks to create buzz for a topic in the media has proven itself in 2010 and the music industry is jumping on board.
Fannie Kelley’s report for Morning Edition closes with the story of Atlanta rapper Big Boi, who leaked songs in 2010 to personally battle with his record label and prove to them he had an audience that would support a release of his album. Kelley writes:
“For three years Jive Records refused to put out his solo album, Sir Lucious Leftfoot, so at the end of last year Big Boi personally began giving away songs from it to rap blogs and then to people that follow him on Twitter.
Eventually Jive let him take the album to Def Jam. When that label looked like it might not hold to a promised summer release date, Big Boi started leaking tracks again. The full album hit stores on July 6th, after the rapper had given away more than a third of it.”
The experiment of leaky music labels has only just begun and observers of the music industry are poised to see what creative marketing behavior will appear in 2011 to help the recording industry gain the upper hand over an industry revolutionized by digitization.
Read Fannie Kelley’s Report for NPR, “This Year in Music: In 2010, Labels Got Leaky,” here.
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