If you roam around on Soundcloud, you will find millions of songs from your favorite hip-hop artists that have never been released. Artists such as Lil Wayne, Travis Scott, Lil Uzi Vert, and Playboi Carti have had music “leaked” thousands of times. The process for leaking music begins with a hacker, who accesses the unreleased music through the artist’s, producer’s, or label’s cloud, email, or servers. After getting their hands on the song hackers post a sale. Songs can cost as little as $30 dollars to as much as $10,000 dollars, depending on an artists popularity, frequency of releasing, and quality of music. Vice, a famous anonymous hacker in the underground music scene famously sold “Shrooms” by Lil Uzi Vert for $1,400 dollars to fans of Uzi who pooled money together in a large group, via Vice. These fans are called “Group Buyers” and will donate money to a GoFundMe in order to buy the song from the hacker. Uzi’s release of the popular album Eternal Atake was delayed because his original version was leaked entirely, forcing him to completely re-do the entire album.
Hackers and “Leakers” are killing the music industry.
By releasing music early, hackers are responsible for many highly awaited albums being delayed, reworked, or canceled. Similar to Uzi’s Eternal Atake, Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red was completely leaked, which led to him delaying the album. Die-hard fans of Carti benefited as they got two entire albums to listen to. However, casual fans who don’t go to sites like SoundCloud or purchase unreleased music had to wait even longer. Die-hard fans completely ruin it for casual fans, as their lack of patience for new music from the artists they love ruins that artist’s plans to release.
The other reason it is hurting so bad is that artists have no options for justice, and hackers have no consequences for their actions. Because sites like soundcloud have so much anonymity, it is hard to find the person or the hacker that got their hands. Because of this there is no one that artists can take legal action towards. So not only do artists not get to serve justice to the thieves that steal their songs, but they do not get any of the money that the song generates. The hard work that artists, producers, and engineers put into a song amounts to nothing, as less fans get to see the song, and they get no financial gain. For an underground artist, this can be devastating, as it could completely end their music career.
The real people that are hurt are the fans. Artists revenue mainly comes from performing at festivals and on tour. Artists that have their music leaked so much realize that not releasing will make the die hard fans come to their tours and their festival performances because of the off chance they will perform unreleased music that could be featured on their upcoming projects. As I’ve already stated, artist Playboi Carti hasn’t released in four years, and performed multiple times a month in 2024. For him, and other artists who are frequently leaked releasing music doesn’t make sense if it means their concerts will be sold out. This hurts the fans out there that will likely never go to a live performance, as they will not get to listen to new music from their favorite artist for a long period of time.
In order to solve the issue, fans need to stop group buying and hacking music. At the end of the day it is unfair to both parties. Fans are stopping themselves from getting new music. And artists are being rewarded for not releasing their music because of the lack of patience from fans. Die hards need to think more about the casual fans or those unwilling to listen to unreleased music.
