Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 11/2/09 Section: Arts & Society

Media Credit: MCT Campus Jay-Z is one of the many artists to have an album leak over the internet.

The question is, when an album leaks over the Internet, does it hinder or promote album sales? In the music industry, an album leak is inevitable. It is like death. Once you've lived life to the fullest, creating your opus of sound, and have an album release date, you can look forward to the death of your work because it will be released over the Internet, hopefully closer to your proposed release date.

The Internet has given rappers, who would have never surfaced in the '90s era of hip-hop, a full tank of gas in the hip-hop scene. While most of the rappers we hear about in the news are household names and can be considered hybrids, using minimal gas, there are the rappers who can be seen as SUVs and need the gas that the Internet constantly produces.

How can you measure the success of entertainers and rappers? If it were based solely on album sells, then most of the mainstream music and the entire population of underground rappers would be ill fated. However, we judge them on lyrical content, performances, style and what they do away from the microphone.

Album leaks can be found on most hip-hop and rap blogs and forums. Even a simple download and the artist name in Google will probably bring up their most recent album leaks, but remember, downloading music is still illegal.

However, talks about taxing and monitoring the Internet would stop all of this, but we all have a free speech and press. Many people profit off of the album leaks, whether it is a friend of the artist or someone at the music labels who have a copy of the artist's work.

When most albums are pushed back and pushed back more, there is a sense of hype building. With all the hype, people may anticipate an album, so when it does leak they will download it as soon as possible, but these people also need to buy the album as well.

A sign that an album is about to leak is when a sample of the album is released over the Internet. Another album leak sign or one of the earliest signs is when the album track listing and artwork is released.

The two recent album leaks are Wale's first album, Attention Deficit, and 50 Cent's Before I Self Destruct. Out of these two artists, who is the most affected rapper by the early album release? We'll just say that 50 Cent is the most affected, simply because his album leaked 27 days earlier than expected.

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