If you’ve read Stephen Witt’s masterful How Music Got Free book, you’ll know the damage labels felt that pre-release leaks did to both their album sales and the marketing campaigns around them.
In trying to hunt down the person who leaked Twenty One Pilots’ ‘Heathens’ (from the soundtrack of Suicide Squad), it was revealed that it first appeared on Slovakian file-sharing site Dropfile ahead of its planned released on 24th June. Atlantic claims that the track was only made available to an “extremely limited number of individuals” but was offered on the band’s subreddit page. An unknown individual going by the username “twentyoneheathens” is currently being sought in relation to the leak. Atlantic claims it was able to swoop in and stop the track spreading to other sites and platforms. In a complaint filed to the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Atlantic now wants Reddit to hand over the IP address that the offending file was uploaded from, with suggestions that, because only a small team had access to the track early, there could be breach of contract issues here. Billboard has approached Reddit to see if it is complying with the request but it would not comment. Given the pasting the film has had from reviewers, there’s a joke here about this track leak being the least negative thing about the film, but we’d rather not make it.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…