Man Who Leaked Madonna Found
While Björk’s recent album leak came as a surprise, it wasn’t too long ago another major artist had her music unofficially shared. Madonna had several demos from her upcoming album, Rebel Heart, leaked – Causing the artist to compare it to a form of terrorism. Now it looks as if the source of the leak has been tracked down.
The Hollywood reporter states that a 39 year old Israeli man has been arrested after a month long investigation by Israel’s Lahav 433, a crime-fighting organization comparable to the FBI. The man allegedly broke into several computers, stealing and selling leaks. But it wasn’t until he broke into Madonna’s personal computer an investigation was put into action. To make things more weird, it also turns out the leaker had been a contestant on a popular, singing TV show.
“While an official gag order has been issued on the suspect’s name, local reports have already surfaced identifying the man as a former contestant on one of Israel’s most popular singing competition TV shows. The suspect is said to have allegedly broken into several musicians’ personal computers, but it was the Madonna leak that led to the investigation.”
Similar to Björk’s leak, Madonna’s camp made the songs available through digital stores once the leak happened. This is a new tactic in order to deal with the leaks as labels usually combat leaks by offering free, advance streams.
Another interesting aspect is the fact that the Israeli crime-fighting organization claims the leaker had previously sold leaks. Which begs the question, who would buy leaked music and how do you turn that into profit?
More to come as the story develops.
In response to the question, “who would buy a leak?”, the answer may surprise you. Many collectors of unreleased material by your favorite artists sell their goods for high dollar price tags so private collectors can have things no one else has. Of course this is highly illegal, but it happens a lot. Just about every major entertainer’s musical output is on the block well in advance of it’s release for those with the money.
As for the alleged leaker of the Madonna demos, if they caught the right guy, he was clearly sloppy, though Madonna’s e-mail or network connection must not be very well protected either. At this point, demos for every song on her forthcoming album, minus one, have leaked, as well as another album’s worth of unreleased songs from the same sessions.
Releasing 6 tracks officially on iTunes is nice and all, but if the album is ready you should just put it out, much like Björk did. Madonna may be a bigger fish, but the issue is the same. In this day and age you don’t hav to promote your album for months in advance if you’re as big a star as Beyonce, Kanye West, Pharrell or… Madonna.
Well it’s true and all but I think this got Madonna some real nice publicity and as you said, she should’ve released her album as soon as it leaked, because something is telling me it’s ready. March is a little “far-fetched” date to release an album being awaited on from many fans. She should let go of it already! And thus leaking 33 demos (which most of them depict her MDNA style) and only some [seemingly crappy ones] made the cut, while she left many good ones like “Two Steps Behind”, “Borrowed Time” or even “Addicted (The One That Got Away)” out of the record. It’s a real big shame. Plus, Madonna should stay away from Hip-Hop because she MAY sound good on some tracks of the listed genre, but she sounds waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better in Electronic/EDM/Dubstep or even some Pop like before… Furthermore, I still am waiting for the album, but I also expected something different (which by the sounds of some demos, made me happier while I thought the opposite) and I wanted something more sounding like MDNA but better. Thanks for reading anyways! :p
“Releasing 6 tracks officially on iTunes is nice and all, but if the album is ready you should just put it out, much like Björk did. Madonna may be a bigger fish, but the issue is the same. In this day and age you don’t hav to promote your album for months in advance if you’re as big a star as Beyonce, Kanye West, Pharrell or… Madonna.” It’s gonna come out sooner or later. Recording and album and sitting on it sounds like the perfect recipe for a leak.