The oldest human instrument is a 60,000 year old bone flute and was thought to have been created by Neanderthals. This flute proves one thing for certain, humans and our early ancestors have loved music for centuries. Sometimes, people love so much they want to hear it before they are supposed to. Today, I will discuss some of the times that popular artists have had their music “leaked”, or released before it was intended. 

Before I get to talking about popular leaks, I can hear you asking “But Keaton, how does a song get leaked in the first place?” Good question, thankfully for you I have some answers. Let’s start with the most common way songs get leaked, and it’s that someone involved with the production or creation of a project releases it early on purpose. The other common way a song gets leaked is by hackers. They can hack into the files of anyone involved with a project and gain access to it. A famous example of this was with Jay Electronica’s Album “Act II” which was found after an anonymous hacker gained access to one of Jay Electronica’s friends laptop files. The hacker would go to do something that happens very commonly with leaked projects, in that he would post the project as a group buy. A group buy is a process where a community must pull money together to get a leaked project released by hackers or leakers. Using apps such as Twitter, Reddit, and other message boards these leak tracks will spread like wildfire. The hype unreleased track received has been seen by popular artists, and some have taken advantage of this. For example, Lil Uzi Vert leaked a snippet of his own song “New Patek” which caused the song to launch to No. 14 on the charts shortly after its official release. 

Now that we know how songs get leaked, let’s talk about some of the most famous leaks in the history of music. The history of leaked songs begins in a very strange place, the Vatican. The year was 1770, and Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart (or as we may know him, Mozart) was 14 years old. He was touring Italy with his father, and attended a concert at the Vatican upon arriving in Rome. At this concert he heard a piece called Miserere mei, Deus. The arrangement of this track was a heavily guarded secret by the Church, and there was a ban on copying the music for almost a century and a half. The song was only performed two days a year, Holy Wednesday and Good Friday, and was to only be performed at the Vatican. After hearing the song once, young Mozart decided to leave and transcribe the whole 15 minute song from memory. It was even rumored that Mozart went and attended another performance of the song that same week to improve his recreation. His father warned that recreating the piece would result in Mozart’s excommunication from the church, however after seeing his recreation the Pope rewarded Mozart with the Chivalric Order of the Golden Spur – essentially Papal knighthood. This fact lends credence to the idea that Mozart’s copy of Miserere was reasonably accurate. You might be saying “Is this actually considered a leak Keaton?” My answer is, it’s my article, so yes. Yes it is. 

Moving forward about 200 years, we find ourselves in the digital era of music. The year was 2000, and Napster had just launched a year before. Napster was the first mainstream p2p file sharing platform. P2p, or peer to peer sharing, means that you access files directly from another person’s computer. For the sake of time, just know that Napster was extremely popular with young adults. Napster became the home for pirated tracks with the first famous example being Metallica’s “I Disappear” which, although it was created for the Mission: Impossible 2 soundtrack, had found its way onto the radio before it had been officially released. The leak was traced to Napster, which meant Napster was public enemy number one in the eyes of the music industry.

The fight between music pirating sites like Napster and the largest companies in the music industry could be the topic of a whole other article, but one more example of Napster being used to pirate songs was with the Radiohead album Kid A. 1,000 select websites were given exclusive streaming rights to the album in order to promote the album through a grass-root style promotion. Within a couple hours, the whole album was posted to Napster. Even after this, the album still debuted at BillBoards #1 spot. This showed that maybe an album getting leaked, could be a good thing? 

Finally, we will talk about one of the most popular leaked songs in recent years. The song I am speaking of is none other than the track “Pissy Pamper”. The track was produced by Pi’erre Bourne for a collaborative mixtape with Young Nudy, and the song was not included due to sample clearance issues with the original sample.Young Nudy had sent the song to Playboi Carti to record a verse on the song, and it was previewed on Instagram Live as a snippet in March 2019. The song was dubbed “Kid Cudi” since Playboi Carti referenced fellow rapper Kid Cudi twice on the track. The song quickly took on meme statues, which is how you may have heard it before. The most popular leak of the track was uploaded by a high school sophomore under the name Lil Kambo. He posted it to his Spotify page after the full track was leaked onto Youtube on April 18, 2019. The leaked track posted by Lil Kamko topped US Viral 50 chart. The track was then taken down and reposted twice by different posters, and reached the US Viral 50 both times. This track remains Young Nudy’s only No. 1 hit, which speaks to the power of leaking in the music industry.