James Delahunty
4 Apr 2007 18:09
Bands that have risen to fame heavily due to Internet promotion and free sharing of their music are turning to services like Web Sheriff to fight illegal sharing of their music. File-sharing has changed security measures around unreleased recordings dramatically. For example, for music writers to hear an advance recording to the Artic Monkeys' Favourite Worst Nightmare album must go to their London HQ to hear it.
Bloc Party, a London quartet indie band tipped to emulate Radiohead's global success, has a huge scare when a copy of their second album, A Weekend in the City, leaked three months before its scheduled release. The band's record company, V2, hired Web Sheriff to fight the spread of the illegal copy around the Internet.
"They were looking at up to one million illegal MP3 song files spreading of an album which was supposed to break the band internationally." John Giacobbi, Web Sheriff managing director, said. The company tracked down uploaders of the music through their ISPs and sent them threatening letters demanding that the sharing cease.
According to V2, as a result of the actions, illegal downloads of the album were dramatically reduced. When it was released, the album went gold and entered the US Top 20. "Working together with Web Sheriff we managed to contain the distribution of the album whilst continuing to raise exposure for the forthcoming release and maintaining excitement amongst the fans." Beth Appleton, V2 head of new media, said.
Source:
Times Online