[JPL] Ripped to Shreds the dying days of the music business

[Jazz Promo Services]

http://www.nymag.com/news/features/42391

Features

Ripped to Shreds

In the dying days of the music business as we once knew it, record labels
are waging war on leaks‹only to discover that many of the saboteurs come
from within the industry itself.

By Adrienne Day
Published Dec 30, 2007

One day last fall, several hundred thousand music fans were confronted with
a harsh new reality. OiNK, an exclusive, members-only file-sharing
community, had been shut down, its servers confiscated; Alan Ellis, the
24-year-old mastermind behind the operation, had been arrested. Once a
premier outlet for free music, OiNK‹with its iconic, headphones-wearing pink
pig‹had been active for over three years. But that day, OiNK users who went
to the site to get their daily music fix were greeted with this message:

³This site has been closed as a result of a criminal investigation by the
[International Federation of the Phonographic Industry], the [British
Phonographic Industry], Cleveland Police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit
of the Dutch Police (FIOD ECD) into suspected illegal music distribution.²

And, more chillingly:

³A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of
the site¹s users.²

You had to be invited to join OiNK, but once a member, you could, at the
click of a button, access an incredible array of free music. It was the
greatest record store of all time, filled with not-yet-released albums,
obscure live performances, the rarest of B-sides, and a fabulous
bonus‹everything was free.

Getting cut off from these riches was more than some OiNK members could
bear. Anger, tears, and recriminations poured out. ³OiNK is Gone, oh God!
Please, Please Please, Please, Please Come Back!² posted one devastated user
on a bulletin board. Another wrote, ³I miss OiNK more than anything in the
world now.² Former OiNKers organized an online fund-raiser for Ellis¹s legal
fees.

The OiNK bust was the flashy culmination of a two-year investigation by
Interpol, the BPI, and the IFPI, no doubt inspired by the increasingly harsh
battle being waged by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
against music piracy in the States. OiNK had over 180,000 members, but as
one file-sharer points out, it¹s ³just the surface. It might be 0.001
percent of the file-sharing community.² Indeed, public music-sharing sites
like the Pirate Bay and Soulseek are open to anyone with the slightest bit
of technical know-how. Others sites such as Waffles, OiNK¹s heir apparent,
are invite-only, with much stricter rules regarding what types of files get
traded and who gets to trade them.

What made OiNK such a rich target? According to IFPI, the site helped
facilitate the spread of new music that record companies had not yet
officially released‹tunes that had been pirated from recording studios or,
more commonly, distributed as advance material to retailers, radio stations,
and journalists. Record labels consider the spread of unreleased music to be
the most damaging of all file-sharing because it effectively renders every
new record out of date and cuts into one of their most significant streams
of revenue‹sales in the first few days after an album comes out. By
attacking OiNK, the music industry has indicated where it will dig its
trenches and fight for its life. The strategy makes a certain amount of
sense, until you consider the ramifications. A war on leaks forces the
industry to investigate the relatively few people who have access to a
recording before it¹s released‹pressing-plant employees, label interns,
publicists, music journalists, even record executives. The industry, in
other words, has to investigate itself. And what it will discover is that
some of the major culprits in this crime are the very same people the crime
threatens most‹those who work in or profit from the music industry. File
swapping is, to a remarkable degree, self-sabotage.

Words can hardly convey the dread that has overtaken the record business as
it watches the number of file-sharers skyrocket. Nielsen SoundScan has
tracked a 45.8 percent increase in legal download sales in the U.S. over the
past year‹and according to BPI, for every digital track that is paid for,
twenty are downloaded illegally for free. Domestic sales of physical CDs,
meanwhile, plummeted 18.9 percent over this past year alone.

Figures like these have set off a wave of layoffs and consolidation
throughout the music industry. As the record companies buckle under an
avalanche of new sites, their counterattacks against these sites can
sometimes seem arbitrary, if not clueless. Consider, for example, Capitol
Records¹ efforts in the fall to help convince a federal jury to fine Jammie
Thomas, a 30-year-old Minnesota woman, $222,000 for sharing 24 songs.

File-sharing technology changes so rapidly that the record industry all but
acknowledges that it has little hope of controlling it. Although
MP3-downloading sites have been around for at least a decade, OiNK had used
a newer technology called BitTorrent to move files around the Web much
faster than Napster ever did. The way BitTorrent works is also what makes it
so difficult to track: Instead of individual files being shared from one
user to another, bits of information spread out over a large network are
pulled from many users simultaneously. Copyright cops can temporarily
interrupt the flow of communication, but as one network dies, others spring
up.


The result is that once an album hits stores, it is impossible to keep it
from being uploaded into this system. But keeping an album under wraps when
only a few hundred carefully guarded copies exist remains within the
tantalizing realm of possibility. The record companies are convinced that
the longer they keep the music offline, the more sales can be preserved.
According to Ben Goldberg, owner of the independent label Ba Da Bing, ³Every
day that a record doesn¹t leak is another day that benefits the sales of the
record.² A source who works in the legal department of a major label
describes the rationale for the war on leaks this way: ³It¹s a moment in
time when the tidal wave hasn¹t gotten so big that you can¹t push it back.
Eventually, it will swamp the dike. But it gives you a little bit of time.²

As the number of people downloading has increased exponentially over the
past few years, however, so has the number of leaks. In the fall of 2006,
Portland, Oregon­based mega­indie band the Shins¹ Wincing the Night Away and
Bloc Party¹s A Weekend in the City hit the Web a full three months early.
Between May and August 2007, popular indie rockers Spoon saw Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
leak almost two months early, and the White Stripes¹ Icky Thump leaked three
weeks early. Linkin Park¹s Minutes to Midnight hit the Web almost two weeks
before it hit stores, as did Kanye West¹s Graduation. Last January, Atlantic
served Cocoamusic.blogspot.com with a cease-and-desist letter after material
from A Weekend in the City appeared on the site. According to a former
employee of Vice Records, Bloc Party¹s label, the album was leaked by an
employee at V2 in London who had grabbed a version from the garbage and
shared it with friends.

Music-industry insiders say the leaks have a profound‹even terrifying‹impact
not only on album sales but also on artists¹ careers and livelihoods. ³The
problem with leaks is that people don¹t necessarily know what they are
hearing‹if it¹s the entire album, finished tracks, etc.,² says Vice label
manager Adam Shore. ³There¹s incredible rush to judgment. People grab an
album, listen to it one time, and they immediately want to post about it.
That sets a tone for people who haven¹t heard it yet.² In the case of the
Bloc Party leak, Shore says, ³the band saw the album as a concept‹it had a
beginning, a middle, and an end. They recorded almost triple the amount of
songs that made it on the record, and selected how they wanted to tell the
story. When the rug got pulled out from under them, they just felt like they
didn¹t have control over what they were doing anymore.² A cottage industry
of unpaid ³MP3 bloggers² have sprung up samizdat style around these leaks,
their sole purpose being to opine (and sometimes post tracks themselves)
before anyone else, often months before an artist considers a song ready for
release.

In an attempt to reduce their risk, major labels ³watermark² advance CDs
with digital codes specific to their recipient. They employ people and
autonomous Web-crawling software to spot leaks, working with the RIAA and
handing leakers to the FBI. The fighting has spilled onto listservs that
simmer with anti-leak screeds and threats to destroy the livelihoods of
anyone who dares share music before its appointed time. ³Name and shame!²
cried out a member on Mishpucha, a popular music listserv. ³Post their name
on Pitchfork in big bold letters!² said another, referring to the popular
online music publication. And then, of course, someone pointed out the
obvious: ³What seems to get lost is that a majority of these leaks are
coming from people who are supposed to be on our side.²

I know more than your average music fan about record labels and how leaks
can hurt them. My ex-boyfriend is the aforementioned Ben Goldberg, the owner
of Ba Da Bing. This fall, he planned to release The Flying Club Cup, the
second album by Beirut, a well-received indie band. Goldberg began
preparations for the album¹s release in May. He hired two publicists to
promote the record, something his tiny, two-person operation had never done
before. They sent out 350 advance copies, each watermarked, to music
journalists, tastemakers, distribution hubs, and friends. On August 26, a
full six weeks before the record was to hit stores, it hit the Internet
instead.

The girlfriend of Zach Condon, Beirut¹s front man, broke the news to
Goldberg after she saw it popping up on blogs. He told the watermarking
company, and within an hour, they had traced it to Erik Davis, a prominent
San Francisco­based freelance writer. When Goldberg found out, he sent Davis
the following e-mail:

³Your copy of the Beirut record was the source of the leak yesterday. We
will be sure to spread the good word to every publicist we know (and some we
don¹t) that your CD was the cause of this. Thanks!²

Next: The world of music 'ripping crews.'

Goldberg waited a day but heard nothing back. So he e-mailed again,
threatening to ³kill a few birds at once tomorrow² by posting on PR lists.
Which, on August 30, he did, blasting Mishpucha and PR Listserv with this
message:

³I¹ve been wondering why people aren¹t more vocal about who actually leak
CDs early Š the way I see it, the following information is quite useful for
people on this list who send out advances on records that they are hoping
does not get uploaded to the BT sites. Last Sunday, the watermarked CD of
the upcoming Beirut album which belonged to Erik Davis‹ahem, that would be
ERIK DAVIS Š E-R-I-K (space) D-A-V-I-S‹ Š who writes for Arthur,Blender and
Spin, amongst others, was leaked onto the Internet and is now easy to find
and download six weeks before release date. Attempts to reach him for
comment have proven futile. Just the facts.²

The response was immediate, and confused. One publicist outed a writer who
had purportedly leaked a new album by the band Pinback, only to admit in
another post that the watermarking system ³has a large margin for error on
all sides. Each CD,² she explained, ³is personalized and sheets of stickers
with corresponding names are printed out, then manually adhered to seal the
CD shut. Mailing labels are then printed and the CDs (hopefully) get matched
up with the correct label. Add unpaid interns to any part of this system and
you are almost guaranteed a fuckup somewhere along the line.²

A producer at MTV News piped up in defense of Davis. ³It¹s not that
clear-cut. I regularly receive watermarked copies from labels that aren¹t
even in my name.² And then one person asked the obvious question: ³Surely if
Mr. Davis Š had not actually leaked the album about which [he is] being
outed, [he] would have responded with the explanation?²

Where was Erik Davis while his reputation as a respected music critic and
journalist was being trashed? Offline, it turns out, rambling around the
Black Rock Desert in a fire truck, celebrating that autumnal rite-of-passage
known as Burning Man. Davis returned home a week later to find his e-mail
box jammed with Goldberg¹s condemnations and messages from reporters. ³I had
no idea what was going on,² he says. ³I [went] through my piles of CDs and
was like, Shit, shit, I can¹t find it! Then I remembered that I had taken a
big load of media, mags, books, crap, to a local thrift store about two
weeks before Burning Man.²

Two months before the Beirut uproar, three tracks from the Brooklyn-based
experimental-folk band Animal Collective¹s new album, Strawberry Jam,
leaked. The tracks were encoded with the name of a 28-year-old man I¹ll call
Drew, who I approached in the hope he might help me understand how The
Flying Club Cup met the same fate. When I asked about Strawberry Jam, Drew
vehemently denied leaking it, though he confessed to being a regular user of
the BitTorrent sites. ³I¹m music-obsessed. I go record shopping weekly and
probably spend $200 on vinyl alone,² he said, like a junkie justifying a
habit. He¹s been downloading music since 1997, the pre-Napster era. ³We¹re
the first generation to have access to this huge catalogue. It makes you a
bigger fan.²

When he worked at a college radio station, Drew was part of a so-called
ripping crew‹secretive, organized groups who put prereleased material on
parts of the Internet called ³darknets.² Crew members, he told me, are not
just gangs of teenagers and self-styled renegades. In fact, many rippers are
music-industry professionals who know where to get the goods. Some work in
recording studios, others in CD- and record-pressing plants. Others are
college-radio kids and music journalists who get free advance music in the
mail. Like graffiti artists staking their urban turf, these crews ³tag² the
music they upload with their initials, getting props from fellow crews and
credit to trade for pirated digital goods. For ripping crews, the most
critical factor, beyond uploading a CD-quality release, is being the first
to do so. Once a ³scene approved² release is out on the Web, the game is
over, and it¹s on to the next album.

Drew claimed he¹s no longer an active member of any ripping crews. So to
understand how these crews work now, he referred me to Spitler (not his real
name), a man who founded his own ripping crew nearly a decade ago. To find
him, Drew said, I had to go to Toronto. The day before I left, Drew called
me. ³Be careful,² he said of his friend Spitler. ³I¹ve never actually met
the guy.²

Next: Do ripping crews actually help artists?

>From the deep, deliberate voice from our few phone calls, I anticipated
someone older, heavier Š weirder. But when Spitler opened the door, I was
surprised to see a normal-looking man in his late-twenties, some youthful
chub still filling out the corners of his face, wearing a Blue Jays baseball
jersey and khakis. He bid me inside.

Spitler¹s abode was hardly the high-tech beehive I expected. It¹s an average
cookie-cutter apartment: beige walls, an empty kitchen, and crates of
records and CDs scattered randomly on the dusty floor. Two books‹one by
Heidegger, the other Martin Buber‹were held upright on a bookshelf by what
looked like a real human skull. An FHM calendar, dated October 2006, hung on
the wall. Spitler sat on a couch and lit a cigarette, eyeing me closely.
³People said don¹t talk to her, don¹t snitch.² He paused. ³I¹ve seen
people¹s families ruined over this. In Canada, it¹s a lot different. But in
the U.S., one second they¹re talking to you, the next the Feds are showing
up at your door. If I was extradited to the States, I could probably go to
jail for the things I¹ve done.²

After I assured him I¹m not a Fed, Spitler gave me a virtual tour of how
leaks work in the scene. ³These are very, very, very organized groups,² he
said. ³We¹re talking about a worldwide organization.² The organization is
hierarchical but decentralized; members don¹t know the other members except
by their online handles. And they¹ve infiltrated the industry at all levels.
Spitler described a mainstream hip-hop artist he insists remain nameless.
³His new album was ripped by a guy who was working on the label¹s Website,²
he said. Another example: ³I heard a member of one ripping crew was dating
the daughter of the president of some label‹that¹s how he was scoring
advances.² It didn¹t sound like he had had trouble finding crew members. ³If
you were a studio guy making $10.50 an hour,² he asked me, ³and you had the
new Eminem album, and someone was offering you money for it, what would you
do?²

Spitler didn¹t start in the music business. ³We were a core group of music
lovers who took the time to seek out great music,² he explained. But the
more his crew grew in size and influence, the more Spitler became
indistinguishable from the industry he was feeding off of. He even went so
far as to launch his own online music magazine, and labels sent him
promos‹which his crew immediately disseminated over the Web. To Spitler,
ripping crews help bands as well as fans. ³We promoted great artists, helped
get them signed,² he claimed. At the time, record companies believed ³they
could push out crap music by a crap artist, based off a hit single.² In
other words, he was like Robin Hood, taking music from the rich and sharing
it with the world.

Last winter, before OiNK was shut down, I chatted with its leader Alan
Ellis, who also argued that file-sharing is a net positive for the music
industry. ³I can see that a site like this doesn¹t do much for sales for the
massive artists,² he conceded. ³But, really, they don¹t need the money
anyway. Whereas the smaller artists who are getting no exposure‹I can¹t even
find music from artists I listen to online, let alone shops‹get so much more
on the Internet.² In an interview with the Telegraph after his arrest, he
maintained his innocence. ³I don¹t sell music to people,² he pointed out. ³I
just direct them to it.²

Record labels would certainly disagree with Spitler and Ellis, who see
little moral difference between those who sell music for a living and those
who share it online. But it¹s clear that even those whose careers depend on
plugging leaks participate in spreading them. They just can¹t help
themselves. One label employee estimated that 90 percent of his friends in
the industry download unauthorized music (which, it should be stated, is
less controversial than uploading, but collaboration nonetheless). I spoke
to a label owner who has liquidated almost half his CD collection. ³I¹ve
downloaded music, yes,² he says. ³It¹s like masturbation‹technology is at a
point where you can¹t prevent people from doing something they can easily
do. That¹s demanding too much of human nature.²

Ben Lebovitz, another OiNK enthusiast and former record-label partner,
concurs. ³The music industry has to change,² he says. ³I might spend a
dollar on a used copy of R.E.M.¹s Murmur,² he said before OiNK¹s demise,
³but then again, why do that when I can get it off OiNK for free?²

Following the trail of the Beirut leak, I contacted an OiNK member called
³Eggsby,² asking where he‹or she‹got the album. ³From a music-journalist
friend,² Eggsby replied before refusing to answer more questions. I also
asked Spitler to trace it. After nabbing the album from one of the many
private FTP sites he can access, he e-mailed back. ³The name of the crew is
[redacted], and they released a [CD-quality version] on October 1. Beyond
that, I really have never heard of these guys before, so I wouldn¹t be able
to give you a lot of data on them.² Given that this leak was posted to the
Web more than a month after an inferior-quality release was spotted by
Goldberg, it¹s clear that more than one party was responsible for spreading
Beirut¹s music.

Erik Davis insists that he is innocent. Is he telling the truth? Does it
even matter? It is increasingly difficult for the music industry to wage its
war against leaks without risking a lot of collateral damage, if not
self-destruction. Leakers are everywhere. Rooting them out is difficult and
costly and can divert energy from finding more creative solutions to the
problem. Like, for example, the model Radiohead pursued this year: After a
failed attempt by front man Thom Yorke¹s record label to strong-arm OiNK
into removing his solo album from the site, the band changed strategies,
inviting fans to pay whatever they wished to download their new record, In
Rainbows, or drop $80 for a lushly packaged, high-fidelity physical album.
One estimate puts their first-month online sales as high as $2.74 million.

Other bands, such as Oasis and Jamiroquai, are rumored to be considering
similar models. But on the whole, musicians with upcoming releases are
steeling themselves for the likely possibility that their albums will be
leaked, no matter how aggressively their record labels crack down on
file-sharing. The music industry¹s panic is understandable, but the outcry
seems especially absurd when one considers how deeply its members are
implicated. Most of the people interviewed for this article downloaded
unauthorized music‹even Ben Goldberg, who feels that having immediate access
to new albums helps him do his job better. ³There¹s definitely some
hypocrisy. I think everyone can come up with their own justification,² he
says, of unauthorized downloads. ³Mine is, I¹m in the music industry.²