Songs or albums may leak days or months before their scheduled release date In other cases, the leaked material may be demos or scrapped work never intended for public release Leaks often originate from hackers who gain unauthorized access to the online storage of an artist, label, producer, or journalist. Same way everything else get leaks, someone involved in the production, distribution, etc of the song/album gets a hold of a copy and releases it or sells it. While traditional methods like physical copies making their way into the wild still exist, the advent of digital distribution and interconnected networks has exponentially expanded the attack surface and created myriad new vectors for leaks But how do these songs get from an artist’s private server or email, and onto a platform like youtube
To find out, vice news reached out to a notorious figure in the leaking community Major artists like sza and tyler, the creator have publicly shown their disdain for such music leaks in the past through social media How and why do these leaks even happen in the first place Hackers, impersonators, and colleagues most leaked music circulating throughout the internet is a result of hacking. Fast forward to now, where hackers, streaming errors, and unwarranted studio recordings are all different ways that an artist's music can be leaked before its official release date For hackers, sometimes the appeal is to hold the unreleased music hostage for ransom, or sell it online.
A leak can be accidental, or deliberate It could go viral, or be unnoticed — so what does it mean to leak something?
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