David Emery OnlineHolding back the waves
31 May 2006
The new Thom Yorke album, “The Eraser”, has leaked onto the internet over a month before it hits the shelves.
While pretty much every major album leaks before it’s released, this ones slightly different as the only copies released were watermarked. Watermarking – it’s claimed – embeds an inaudible code in each track on the cd, which is then logged against the person the cd was sent to; hence, every cd can be traced back to it’s owner. This code is still preserved even if you record the audio onto a dictaphone, apparently, so it’s going to be in the files that are being circulated.
As far as I know, this is the first time that a leak of an album has been from a watermarked cd, so it’s going to be interesting on many accounts; firstly, will they be able to trace it back? I’m not sure if this tech has really been tried in anger before.
However, I think the bigger question is: what then? Does the label try and prosecute the leaker? I would imagine that they can probably sue for potential missed sales (number of downloads X price of the cd?), but what does this do to the reputation and standing of the label? Sure, for a major label this isn’t much of a concern (everybody hates them already), but for an independent like XL it’s much more of a concern.
This is probably going to be a landmark case – watermarking is only ever going to work if people think that 1) it can be successfully traced back to them and 2) they will be in a whole wold of hurt if they get caught. If that doesn’t happen this time, then watermarking is dead in the water.