I’m at the age now where a lot of my friends have started to move away from home. I go back to Bournemouth every few months and get reminded of places, people and times that I don’t really think about as much anymore in my 1 bed flat in South London. Music is one of the biggest vehicles for nostalgia. I would connect to the bluetooth in my friend's Toyota Yaris and queue up tracks, anticipating remarks such as “Wait, what artist is this?” or “When did this come out?”. In reality, it wasn’t their fault they didn’t know these tracks - they were never meant to see the light of day at all.

I was playing a playlist of leaks, Yandhi, Pissy Pamper, if you know, you know. It made me look like some sort of crate digger master - someone who had access to a world of music most people are not even aware of, even if they are massive fans of the artists. In reality, these songs were stolen by online hackers, then sold for a high fee to a group who are willing to pay for such things. Now I’m a few years older and am in a bit of a closer proximity to the wider music industry, I recognise the supply chain issues and logistical fallout these stolen files can cause.

There are many commentaries of music leaks, the implications and even the process of how the files are taken from iCloud or Google accounts, sold on forums or discord servers and so on. I’ve not found much commentary on the cultural impacts of leaks. Leaks can cause issues at nearly every stage of the music creation and distribution process. There’s also music fans who base a large part of their persona around preferring leaks over actual released music as they see themselves as part of a secret group. I’ve been inspired to look into this and raise an overall discussion on the impact of music leaks in the internet age, and how AI may change the landscape even further.

I won’t give a full history of music leaks here, this is already written by a better writer elsewhere, so maybe go and read that first if you want a bit more context before you read the rest of this. I will however, start with one of the leaked albums which interests me the most, dating back to 2013 - Jai Paul’s much anticipated debut album ‘bait ones’.

Jai Paul has some of the most cult-like fans I've come across - I know because I'm one of them. I have distinct memories associated with most of the songs from his album ‘Bait Ones’, until recently, the album was only available by tracking down a direct download link online. Back in 2013, Jai Paul was one of the most anticipated upcoming artists. Signed to XL Recordings, collaborating with Drake, Beyonce and more, his debut album was really highly anticipated. Towards the end of the production process for the album, Jai was out in London and his laptop got stolen, containing the masters of what seemed like his full, finished album. The leaks shortly surfaced online, starting what was a long and painful period of the artist’s career and life.

Listeners are often completely disconnected from the impact of music leaks. It can be devastating for something you worked on for years in some cases to be stolen and displayed online in an often unfinished form.

As mentioned, Bait Ones became a cult classic. Similar to how Mk.gee now can be described as ‘your favourite artist’s favourite artist’, Jai Paul gained a cult status, which he still maintains to this day, amongst many who downloaded the baitones.zip file and loaded it onto iTunes.

The album existed in this state for many years until eventually releasing on streaming services via XL Recordings under the name “Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones)”. This highly respected masterpiece of an album was essentially renamed to allude to the leak which caused it to be almost permanently shelved. Almost every song on the album has an “- Unfinished” next to the track title, another reminder that even if fans get a hold of leaks, attach their identities to them and hold onto them for a long time, in the eyes of the artist, the music is eternally unfinished until they return to finish it - if they ever do.

Other instances of leaks which come to mind include a Frank Ocean groupbuy from a few years ago. One track in particular “Steer it” really resonated with me. Shortly after the leakers received all the money from donors and the MP3 was released, it was revealed that there’s a high chance the leak was actually not genuine, the vocals were somebody else with a Frank Ocean AI style transfer.

I still want to believe the song is genuine, to be honest - although it’s probably not. This opens up another conversation around leaks in the age of AI. This is one of the first cases I’m aware of that AI has potentially been used to lure fans of an artist to buy stolen music, only for the music to turn out to be not genuine. Some fans don’t really care that it’s not real. Does authenticity matter slightly less in the context of leaks, as the music is already ‘stolen’, therefore softening the ethical blow of the AI generated aspect?

In the world of music leaks, some tracks are bought privately and then ‘vaulted’, essentially blocking anyone else from ever hearing the track, unless it surfaces from another source, which is usually unlikely. Usually leaks are purchased and the buyers can only hear a snippet of around 10 seconds with a loud watermark over the top.

It's common for artists and their teams to travel with their album’s files in harddrives, neglecting cloud storage altogether. Travis Scott famously travelled with a briefcase handcuffed to his security guard’s wrist, supposedly containing project files for his album UTOPIA. This was distinctive aesthetically, but it would have had a functional element to it too. An album like UTOPIA, with a team spanning across producers, songwriters, A&Rs, managers - this could implicate at least 30+ Google or iCloud accounts - would you trust each of these people to be secure or resist leakers offering money for your work?

Other creative industries seem to be harder on leaks. I guess the format of modern music, easy to move 4-ish megabyte MP3’s allows easier sharing than a whole movie or a PDF of a fashion lookbook. The famous “You wouldn’t steal a car” anti-film piracy advert was one example of leaking or piracy going mainstream. I think that was on every DVD I watched growing up.

Technology is advancing fast, the ones who are on the edge, keeping up with the latest announcements and tools get a slight advantage over the rest. This applies to hackers looking for music leaks, musicians looking to protect their IP and labels looking to track down and prosecute those who are stealing files. I’m not sure how much the average listener cares about the ‘authenticity’ of music. If they would be happy listening to AI generated Lofi HipHop, this may seem innocent, but it is a slippery slope to the endgame of a full music ecosystem of AI artists.

This week, Google announced SynthID, a content watermarking tool which in theory, will be able to embed an invisible tag in all AI generated content to help us easily see what is real and what is AI. This type of technology could potentially be used by labels to tag in-progress music files with inaudible watermarks, which could help track down the source the leaked track was stolen from. We are yet to see how effective technology like this will be, maybe the announcement of this tool will be just a flash in the pan.

I’m left asking the question, are leaks good or bad for artists? There’s definitely benefits in terms of enhancing community amongst fans, adding aura and lore around the artist and adding perceived value to the artists catalog. The issue is that none of this value ends up in the artist’s pocket. Leak groupbuys regularly raise upwards of $5,000 for a track and the money ends up in a hacker's pocket. I’m not sure who’s fault that is. I suppose it could be worse.

I don’t feel guilty for listening to music leaks, but do I believe there is an opportunity there for artists to better monetise their unreleased music catalog. This could be on platforms such as Vault FM, Bandcamp or here on Nina where longer form releases are incentivised and fans can buy for a set price or membership. Surely that is better than paying the hacker who stole from the artist. There could be a world where artists are pushed onto platforms like Vault FM, just like they were pushed onto Spotify, not because they want to, but because the alternative is losing total control of their unreleased catalog to hackers, groupbuys, and underground forums.