As technology continues to improve and hackers only become more advanced, music leaks have grown more common; however, these leaks and their effects may not be as bad as they once were.
In the past, if an artist’s music got leaked prior to their planned release, it could ruin their whole album and possibly even their career. Before digital streaming services became a mainstream listening platform, people would have to purchase CDs. This meant that if an album was leaked, sales would go down, as people would listen to the songs for free online instead of buying the physical copies. This resulted in the artist losing money, defeating all the hard work put into their projects.
“I think when an artist’s music gets leaked, it undermines months of hard work and careful decision making in the album building process. That can anger and discourage artists from releasing new music,” Brock Herndon, senior, said.
Despite how harmful they were in the past, today, music leaks have begun leaving more positive effects than negative. Instead of harming album sales, music leaks are starting to increase artists’ popularity and the attention towards their music, resulting in more streams once the actual song is released. This has led some artists to intentionally leak parts from their songs on social media apps like TikTok to gain traction and demand for the music, as it makes audiences excited to hear more.
“Chance [the Rapper] and TisaKorean seeded snippets of their new single with fans before it was even released. They were saying, ‘Hey, DM us, we’ll send you a snippet early,’ and they used that to seed it on the platform early, build momentum, build demand,” Jeff Vaughn, President of Capitol Records, said.
Lil Mosey’s song, “Blueberry Faygo,” was fully leaked in 2020, when fans uploaded hundreds of versions to streaming services like Spotify, leading the song to make Spotify’s Viral 50 list at least seven times in one month. At first, his team tried to stop this, but every time one version was taken down, another one quickly took its place, causing them to eventually give up. However, this surprisingly did not negatively affect streams when the song was officially released, and it actually increased them.
“Leaks in the music industry seem like they would be bad for the artist, but it actually turns out to help creators gain popularity. ‘Blueberry Faygo’ by Lil Mosey blew up on TikTok in 2020 before it was even released, so by the time it was actually released, it was so popular that it ended up boosting Lil Mosey’s popularity,” Danielle Walsh, junior, said.
Although music leaks are becoming more of a positive influence, many artists still do not appreciate them, as it takes away from their actual release, especially if the leak is not a finished product.
