Lady Gaga ‘Applause’ Leak Sparks Fan-Driven Anti-Piracy Campaign

[shamu726]

As Lady Gaga fans all over the world eagerly await the release of their idol’s new album, many are now helping the star with a quite unusual anti-piracy campaign. Over the weekend, snippets of a new Gaga track titled “Applause” leaked online but instead of trying to spread the content far and wide, Little Monsters are becoming little angels by reporting links in their hundreds to Gaga’s label.

During the last decade and a half the leaking of music online has become a very common phenomenon. These days it’s quite exceptional for a new album to become available via official sources before it’s available illegally and file-sharing sites and networks are awash with content at the click of a button.

A couple of years ago leaks became so common that in all but the most unusual of cases, pre-releases ceased to become ‘news’. However, this past weekend an angry reaction by one of the world’s biggest pop stars provoked a somewhat interesting response from her fans.

In November Lady Gaga will release her new album. Titled ‘ARTPOP’, it features a new single called ‘Applause’, several snippets of which were leaked onto the Internet this weekend. Perhaps needless to say, Lady Gaga wasn’t impressed.

So while just another leak is somewhat unexciting, the response by Gaga’s fans to her apparent upset changes things a little.

Rather than sharing links to the leaks far and wide as might be expected, many of Gaga’s Little Monsters have become little angels with the launch of their very own crowd-sourced anti-piracy campaign.

It isn’t clear Who started the movement, but there are now thousands of fans condemning the leak on Twitter and various blogs and fan forums, many providing a link to Universal Music’s portal where people can report sites hosting the leaked track. Add to this a retweet of the campaign by Lady Gaga herself and things really gained traction.

The response by Gaga’s fans is fairly unusual, with one claiming to have reported upwards of 500 links to Universal, with others focusing on celebrity scalps. “Just reported a Soundcloud link and Perez Hilton’s blog to UMG,” one Gaga fan wrote on Twitter.

But despite the enthusiasm, one has to question the whole episode on a number of levels.

First, we aren’t talking about a whole album leak here, or even the leak of a full single. This is the leak of a few seconds of what appears to be three different parts of the track ‘Applause’, so why is Gaga so annoyed and why are her fans so outraged to the point of helping her to get the content taken down?

These samples represent the perfect taster – just enough to get people excited but not too much so that people don’t want to buy the real thing. From a business perspective, leaving them up makes more sense than taking them down.

Second, one has to wonder how many of the Little Monsters had the self control not to click any of the links they found, if only to test what they were reporting was the real deal. One can imagine a solitary fan, hunting down these links, thinking “just one little listen by me won’t hurt.” And they’d be absolutely right.

Let’s face it – most of Lady Gaga’s fans listened to the links they found. Of course they did. And when Gaga retweeted the ‘report piracy’ link to her 39.7 million followers, did she think for an instant they would deny themselves a sneak listen to a few measly seconds of their idol’s latest work? She may as well have cut out the middle man and pasted the link there herself.

So has any harm been done? No – absolutely none whatsoever. Will Universal spend a fortune getting these links taken down? Doubtful. Straight to number one when the track’s released in a few days? Guaranteed.

Source: TorrentFreak

[Ambrocious]

[mastershake]

who the heck cares. imo she is terrible and i dont care if i say it. why bother even searching for it if you ask me. lol... doesnt matter there will still be link no matter what they all do.

[AlexCross]

She's overrated anyway, her music is like torture for me.

Ps. Her videos too.

Edited August 13, 2013 by AlexCross

[Pedrito]

Lady Gaga... :lmao:

[Teemo]

I don't care, I'm not her fans.

[Veboy]

#TrueMonster ? #MonstersUnite ? Seriously ? Just force them to always wear a condom, so the future generations would be immune to these kind of idiots.

[Bhanche]

Maybe she's saving for a private jet and needs all the money she can get ;)

And all this "do not download talk" made me listen to that song, so maybe it's a publicity stunt, either by accident or by design.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Bhanche

[speedpedal]

I think the appropriate punishment for downloading any of her songs is to have to listen to each one for 36 consecutive hours! Of course that would be cruel and unusual punishment I suppose.

Edited August 13, 2013 by speedpedal

[kmr1684]

I think the appropriate punishment for downloading any of her songs is to have to listen to each one for 36 consecutive hours! Of course that would be cruel and unusual punishment I suppose.

:troll: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: ha ha ha ha ha after lomg i hearing and joke about her just keep it coming i am listerning

[software182]

...

Edited August 21, 2019 by software182

[Cypher3927]

Fuck this stupid twit and her garbage music for garbage people. She creates the same mindless cookie-cutter automatons that she purports to be against. What a joke, I'd applaud...when she gets hit by a bus. :injured: