2010: The Year Of The Album Leak (The Majors Did It)

2010 was the year the song leak was given the full monty and generated so much buzz that even the RIAA perked it's ears at sites like Onsmash.com and shuttered them. It used to be a energy rush to get these leaks and consumers actually felt like they were getting even with the majors that control this business, but the majors turned the "leak" on it's ear and used it to their advantage in 2010 by beating everyone to the punch.

Kanye West was leading the pack with an entire campaign of releasing singles for free with his "Good Fridays" promotion which gave every consumer a free download of a multitude of songs on kanyewest.com, and as Kanye stated on Twitter, "I know yall need the music so I'm dropping 1 new song every weekend until Xmas. It may be my song it may be a new Jay [Z] song etc..." he wrote. West also just released a leak of his "Monster" video. Dr. Dre, Justin Bieber, Michael Jackson, etc. were just a few of many artists that had either songs or entire albums leaked in 2010 by labels, their representatives and employees on purpose as part of their marketing campaigns.

There's something called a buzz single that publicists offer blogs and websites to post months before an album is actually in stores. It's not the official single, and until the full album is released you usually can't pay money for it even if you want to.

The majors formerly would hold these mastered and complete albums under lock and key tighter than the gold at Fort Knox, and when I worked at a major distributor, they would assign codes to albums when giving out promotional material, so that each person receiving a promotional item could be tracked down, but in 2010 the majors, along with their marketing departments decided to begin leaking songs, and headed off the calvary before pirates even got a crack at them. So what seemed to consumers like they may have been getting over, actually was supposed to be.