Leaks, traders & insiders: what are your thoughts?

[MonsterRocket 55]

Now that all these new leaks are happening, many people are using certain terms such as "leaker", "stems / unreleased music traders", "insiders", etc. What do you know about this whole issue? How can some random people have access to this kind of material or contact the hackers that leak it and provide others with it (i imagine that this happens in exchange of something, of course).

Even if you don't have rigurous knowledge about this topic, what are your thoughts about it? Where do you think traders get all their material? What do you think that there's behind all of this issue? I feel like it's quite an interesting topic.

[Sid 6,755]

My opinion: real fans don't sell another artist's unfinished songs for profit 

[blur 82]

I remember when Love (LDR) leaked and all that lana stuff was leaking a couple months ago I remember people saying the leaker had connections with people Lana worked with and paid to get stuff, then of course he messed up all the songs and leaked his weird versions of them so he'd continue to be hyped up because people wanted the studio versions (fine china was one of the songs forgot the rest). so i mean i guess some people pay for unreleased stuff to leak. I guess some people leak through hacking and stuff so thats also there. I really don't know much about the whole business though im just putting stuff i've heard. 

edit: the timeline of this post is really messed up yikes. fine china and some demos were leaked a couple months before love (around late dec. early jan.) with love leaking in febuary.

[Starbucks 4,204]

I don't really know this but I guess they got the material from someone close to the artist, or the producer, or the mixer, or someone working on record studio, or maybe the artist itself sell them. 

[Starbucks 4,204]

Or it's just simply they hacked the artist

[AVeryGagaHolyDick 24,863]

I think Gaga leaked them all

[SpookyKid 15,151]

Trading has been happening since forever, with every artist, and it will keep going, there isn't much we can do about it

[JustifyMyLove 2,593]

8 minutes ago, Ruth Hogben said:

My opinion: real fans don't sell another artist's unfinished songs for profit 

Real fans like the people who runs these leaks acc don't try to sell these stuffs for almost 200€ moments b4 they're literally gonna leak 

[R3L04DED J 1,589]

5 minutes ago, kevindjibouti said:

I think Gaga leaked them all

Same, or Boris 

[R3L04DED J 1,589]

10 minutes ago, Ruth Hogben said:

My opinion: real fans don't sell another artist's unfinished songs for profit 

Lol, leaking Gaga songs to buy JWT tickets and UO merch 

[SpookyKid 15,151]

7 minutes ago, kevindjibouti said:

I think Gaga leaked them all

Nah, the ones that leaked these past demos were impersonating Gaga's management and got the demos from some studio

[bloody g 31,746]

Leakers? I think the label is leaking everything themselves. Million Reasons studio acapella leaked not long after the superbowl. And now that The Cure is dying, magically the stems for DIC, DH and A-YO leak, which happen to be the biggest contestants for a new single 

[ImpossiblePrincess 3,859]

well remember in may or april those stem files were in hackers hands, so?

[britneyspears 497]

It's not that hard to gain access to them. In the case of Lana fans, I know that some of them remotely hacked into her hard drive to access her songs when she connected to an unstable wifi network in a hotel once. Some of them emailed her producers pretending to be her and asked for copies of the song, which the producers gave to them. Some of the songs come from insecure registration sites or sites of producers, meaning that the songs could be easily accessed and downloaded. Some songs are anonymously uploaded by producers and not found by the majority of fans for a long while later. Some older songs come from people who were friends with/worked with the artist in question before fame, so have various copies of unreleased songs. The most infamous leaker of Lana songs - Eclipse - has never revealed his sources, though it's speculated that he has access to a database of sorts. And sometimes, people just strike lucky by asking traders for a track and get given them. There's some nice people who, like Farhan and/or Haus of Retrograde, leak and trade stuff without any of the bullshit, but for the most part the whole trading community is predominately full of a sense of entitlement and power-complexes.

EDIT: And yes, sometimes the artist or the label themselves leak songs in order to build up hype or stir up some news. 

[Hurem 17,800]

Eh, there's nothing to do or say. It sucks that people make huge money off of hacking an artist and then selling around their stuff.