THE NEW HAS IT LEAKED

Finally.

As music fans, we’re a breed of our own. While some people are stunned gadget freaks wait for days in line for a new iPhone, or when movie buffs camp for weeks to watch a Star Wars premiere, nobody is surprised when a music fan downloads an album illegally in order to listen to it before it hits retail.

This site is not about treating music as something that should always be free. Let’s be clear: Has it Leaked doesn’t support piracy or assume that labels and artists are able to live on merchandise and touring alone. I worked as an artist with a fairly standard record deal, it’s brutal out there. But simply ignoring the fact that album download leaks are a big part of the music culture is pointless. Has it Leaked is here to lessen the gap between labels, artists and fans. We aren’t here to treat labels as greedy, money hungry, DMCA devils or pointing fingers at pirating, generation-free, music leechers. We want to act as a bridge between these two worlds that can stand to learn a lot from each other.

And now it’s time to make our site even more label, artist and fan friendly. Hard work, brainstorming, sleepless nights and testing, combined with a few bad judgement calls and with a budget consisting of basically nothing – Its taken a year to complete the new Has it Leaked. Here are a few new features:

Custom tailored music news. Members are able to add news to albums, which means fans no longer having to rely on visiting several music sites to find out if there’s news about one particular anticipated album. You’ll be able to add stories, new songs, videos, leak reports, streams, quotes – Just about everything. All in one place.

Your own community. Add your own groups and dedicate them to a genre, a band or whatever you please. Invite friends to the group, add administrators, make it private or public – Make it your own hangout with friends. And don’t forget our community manager Muriel, who will listen to all of your requests and make sure we supply the best music site on the net.

A complete redesign. I’m trying to differentiate us from illegal MP3 blogs and torrent sites. And we’re not a regular music site either, restricted by labels and retail dates. Therefore I wanted something which doesn’t look like any other site. And since music is art, I’ve been fortunate enough to get talented, high-profile artists, such as Leah Yerpe, Joseba Eskubi and Craww, to provide artwork which not only looks stunning, but gives us an identity and personal touch.

New front page, easy navigation and mobile functionality. The site’s code is literally rewritten from scratch by Prakhar. This gives us the tools to sort albums however we want. Why not list Nirvana albums, albums which have been recently updated with news, or maybe all psychedelia albums on the site? And Tanja, our resident CSS expert, has been hard at work on both tablet and mobile functionality making it adapt to just about any screen.

Literally hundreds of changes and fixes. We now separate leaks from streams, new point and rating system, album recommendations, better genre system, less ads for members, live site activity streams, faster loading times, better leak emails, submit articles to be featured on the site, new toolbar and a My Albums page… And more than I could list here.

 
Finding something which doesn’t work? We’re still in beta, and bugs are unfortunately going to pop-up. Please report any bugs or issues to Prakhar here. If there are any social or community aspects you lack, feel free to talk to Muriel.

The new Has it Leaked is a team effort. While I come up with functionality and design the site, it wouldn’t be possible without Prakhar dedicating his brilliant coding skills, countless hours and willingness not to do anything half-assed. Neither would we have anything to browse if it weren’t for Tanja’s CSS or Sean writing great articles and correcting my Swedish-English. And Muriel joining us and dedicating her time to actually finding out if you like what we do. And a very special thanks to our moderators (Expassion!), PR and social junkies Julien, Matt, Eric, Marcin, Justin and Colton. Additional, proper, code support from EGCP and the Buddypress team. The wonderful artists Maria Hagejärd, CRAWW, Leah Yerpe, Joseba Eskubi and Kate Zambrano. And kudos to Brian and Nishant. And let’s not forget Austin who both returned in time for the new site. Thank you all.

Lastly, I am constantly and consistently amazed by you, the members. Adding to, editing, dedicating, hyping, hating and loving both albums and the site. Thank you!

Written by Staffan Ulmert. Published 2014/07/02. More articles.