* Illustration: Nana Rausch * Annoying overdubs, artist cajoling, imprisoned discs — the music industry's strategies for preventing leaks of upcoming albums are elaborate enough to have been hatched by Wile E. Coyote. To no avail: Advance copies meant for the media are inevitably finding their way online before official release dates, rendering multimillion-dollar marketing plans moot. Recent leaks of tracks by marquee artists like LCD Soundsystem and Gnarls Barkley have made the notion of "album-drop" dates a quaint tradition. With the RIAA reporting a third straight year of declining revenue, Wired thinks it's time to revisit the labels' finger-in-the-dike tech — and make a few predictions of what they'll try next.
The White Stripes
Elephant (2003)
The duo sends out 150 vinyl-only advances to a select group of music journalists. Eager fans face an analog hurdle: What's a turntable? They must first figure out how to record the platters, then convert them to MP3s — before not-so-selectively posting them online.
Tori Amos
Scarlet's Walk (2002)
Epic includes a free gift with the redheaded chanteuse's advances: a CD Walkman that's been glued shut. Even the headphone plug is epoxied into the jack. Cranky writers crack the Walkman open like a coconut, remove the CD, and discard their "gift."
Guster
Keep It Together (2003)
The jangle pop group makes a preemptive strike against leakers by posting its fourth studio album on Kazaa weeks before its official release. One noticeable difference, however, is that every lyric has been replaced by their studio engineer singing the word meow.
Ghostface Killah
The Big Doe Rehab (2007)
In a YouTube vid, Wu-Tang's Ghostface Killah calls out MySpace fans for ripping instead of buying his latest effort. "Even if you downloaded that shit, man, go to the store and cop that," he orders. Ghostface then makes a promise to anyone who brings an authorized CD to the show: "I'll sit there and kick it with y'all. We can get goosed out, whatever y'all wanna do."
The Game
L.A.X. (July 2008)
The West Coast rapper's complete advance album is sent out as 30-second ringtones on 97 separate cell phones. When journalists use the phones outside of work, the minileaks have the public clamoring ... for Nokia's bangin' new ringtones.
The Fiery Furnaces
Remember (August 2008)
Brother and sister neo-proggers wisely realize that without sound waves there can be no leak. Working with a team at MIT, the group records their live album by playing in a near-perfect vacuum. When listeners complain of hypoxia and an embolism, Fiery Furnaces frontwoman Eleanor Friedberger sneers, "Go listen to your boring normal-air music, then."
Conor Oberst
Conor Oberst (August 2008)
Before they ship the weepy folkster's self-titled disc, publicists require journalists to submit credentials plus a detailed description of how they lost their virginity. Horrified reviewers receive advances with these accounts read aloud. The album is never leaked.
Guns N' Roses
Chinese Democracy (February 2187)
Axl's magnum opus is finally released as free trade reopens between the Federated Planets in the wake of the Palladium Wars. A peptide-based neuro-suppressor is embedded in the advance's nanostructure, inflicting instant organ failure on those who attempt to upload it to the HiveMind.
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