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In between peer-to-peer music sharing programs, bittorrent networks and direct-download music blogs, there’s never been a tougher time to release music. Yet while nobody can police the internet, you’re not entirely powerless in protecting your intellectual property interests and – shock horror – maybe even breaking even on your latest release.

   

1. Everything Starts With Google

We’ll assume that your album is about to be released, and promotional copies have been sent out to media and DJs for review.

Shortly after this happens, it’s time to setup regular Google searches for your artist and your release title to see what sort of coverage you’re getting.

Better than manual searches are Google Alerts, which can be setup to automatically “ping” Google’s index and notify you by email whenever a new entry pops up with the search terms you specify.

Here are some sample alerts you might want to set up to keep an eye on what's happening to your release (in this case, Michael Jackson's Thriller):-

• [michael jackson] thriller mp3
• [michael jackson] thriller rar
• [michael jackson] thriller rapidshare
• [michael jackson] thriller torrent

This is an illuminating exercise. As well as showing you when your music turns up on legitimate, paid download sites and online review sites, you’ll also see when some unscrupulous blogger has linked to a direct-download of your release.



2. More About Those Unscrupulous Bloggers…

Several years ago, new music leaked via P2P applications like Limewire, Soulseek and, further back in history, the original incarnation of Napster.

Today consumers don’t need to go as far to find illegal music. The internet is packed full of hastily-setup blogs full of posts linking to copyright material, with direct-download links that are just perfect for lazy, one-click pirates.

This is without question the biggest single problem faced by the psytrance industry today. More times than not, when searching Google for information or coverart for a release I'm reviewing, the first links will be for direct downloads of the whole album.

Google Alerts should be popping up any blog links like this. It’s also a good idea to regularly search music blogs using specialised music blog search portals - Hypem and Elbo are good places to start.

If you find a blog with links to your copyright material, send a quick email to the blog’s owner asking to have the links removed. If the blog is hosted on Blogspot, it's owned by Google -- so wing over a complaint saying that they're hosting links to your copyright material. 

This probably definitely won’t accomplish anything, so it’s time to head to the source…




3. The Rapidshare Problem

One-click hosting sites such as Rapidshare and MegaUpload started out innocently enough, offering users storage solutions for their files, and a replacement for emailing large attachments and clogging up inboxes.

More recently they’ve morphed into something darker – an anonymous repository for copyright material including music, movies and software programs.

Both Rapidshare and Megaupload offer direct contact links where you can request the “takedown” of unauthorised music. See http://rapidshare.com/abuse.html.

It’s a good idea to search daily for your music on these sites. You can use Google’s [site:] search query to check where your music might be appearing:-

•     site:megaupload.com [michael jackson] thriller
•     site:rapidshare.com  [michael jackson] thriller

Bookmark these searches, and check them daily for changes. If you’re on top of every single appearance of your album on download sites, soon enough pirates will get bored of constantly reuploading them and move onto something else. 

4. A Torrent of Abuse

Bittorrent is a trickier area of the net to patrol, in virtue of its complete anonymity, and the fact that the copyright files themselves are not stored on any traceable server location.

Torrent sites such as mininova and The Pirate Bay do have contact forms where you can request the removal of a particular torrent file on the grounds of copyright infringement, but it’s a largely fruitless process. They don’t listen to reps from movie companies, so why should they listen to you?

Whether or not you think it’s worth trying is up to you. Many labels consider unauthorised file sharing after the album’s release date to be “fair game”; they want to protect their copyright property up until the album’s release date, after which the music is out there in the world already, and piracy is inevitable.



5. Physical Promos

While it’s not really music piracy, it’s still naughty. If you send out CD or vinyl promos, check and see if they’re being resold on eBay. This isn’t just rude, it’s illegal – in 2007 London police arrested and charged someone for doing exactly this.

eBay’s support department is responsive, and knows that it can be held liable for allowing the sale of promotional music – something that is technically illegal, since a promotional recording is the property of the copyright holder and not the recipient, who is something of a ‘temporary custodian’.



Wrapping It All Up

Whether you decide to try to restrict the online availability of your album until release date, or whether you want to go the whole hog and make it your life’s mission to battle music piracy, it’s definitely worth taking some sensible steps to fight the problem

Regularly searching music blogs and one-click download sites takes less than an hour each day, and has a definite effect on reducing the availability of your music.

It’s demoralising, it’s slightly shocking, and you’ll probably encounter some resistance as you go. But hey, nobody gets into the music business because it’s an easy life!