Last Friday, Underwire crammed in to a sold-out show as Ratatat made a mixed crowd of pegged-jean
waifs and cargo-short brahs bounce along to their own brand of hip-hop influenced electronica. It was a good show, but the thing I was really curious about, and failed to answer, was whether Ratatat was selling their album "Remixes Vol II" at their merch table. Because just one week before their show, the album leaked.
Or maybe leaked isn't even the right word. Like their previous album of remixes, the groups takes tracks from big names like T.I. and Jay-Z and gives them their own distinctive sound, heavy on the synthesized organ and guitar. Also like their previous album of remixes, it'll be self-released and is (at least in the RIAA's eyes) definitely guilty of copyright infringement. So could an album like this, or Girl Talk's "Night Ripper" or Danger Mouse's "Grey Album" really even be said to leak? When T.I. and mixtape master DJ Drama teamed up this January in response to leak of T.I.'s new album, they simply called it, flippantly, "The Leak." The arrest of DJ Drama a few weeks later shows how fraught the copyright waters are right now, and how aggressively the RIAA is willing go after those it sees as flaunting its rules, especially those making money while doing so.
Of course, every album leaks. All the albums listed on Metacritic to come out next Tuesday are readily available, either on a torrent or via a P2P sharing service. To a lot true music nerds waiting until an album gets its official, legal release is cute but kinda quaint. But if an album like "Remixes Vol II" can't be given a legal release, does a release date even matter? Is it better for an artist to have the physical CD be passed from fan to fan, or have it passed from Soulseek account to BitTorrent user?
