After surfacing on Google Drive, Frank Ocean’s ‘Blond’ has been on SoundCloud for more than a day. Strangely, none of this stuff getting ripped down…
Frank Ocean’s just-released album, ‘Blond,’ has now surfaced on SoundCloud, the latest high-profile leak from a major Apple Music rival. Over the weekend, a leaked copy of the album surfaced on Google Drive, as first reported by Digital Music News.
That Drive link remains open and available as of Monday midday. That is, despite tens of thousands of views on that story since Sunday.
The SoundCloud full stream seems to be spreading across multiple accounts, including ‘Rap Favorites,’ with approximately 27,800 followers. The ‘Rap Favorites’ SoundCloud link is easily found through Google search results.
Other versions are quickly found through SoundCloud’s own search engine.
Sounds like another leak, but SoundCloud changes the game entirely. The reason is that it’s not illegal for fans to stream the album from SoundCloud, given that the copyright breach has happened on SoundCloud’s servers (and it’s their responsibility to tear it down, or at least respond to a DMCA takedown request).
In the case of Google Drive, torrents, and web-based downloads, fans are committing copyright infringement the minute they download a copy for themselves. None of that is likely to be enforced.
Is all of this happening on purpose?
Meanwhile, illegal (and free) versions of ‘Blond’ appear to be proliferating everywhere, with little policing by the Ocean camp. That could be intentional, with Ocean already cashing a fat check from Apple in exchange for an Apple Music exclusive. Effectively, Apple has every interest in clamping down on freebie copies to drive Apple Music subscriptions. Conversely, Ocean has every interest in spreading it — especially since he’s already been paid.
That conspiracy theory actually makes strategic sense for Ocean, given that most revenues now come from live performances, not recordings. So why not get as many people into the music as possible?
Google keeps feeding the free Frank Ocean…
In line with that thinking, a quick search on Google for ‘Frank Ocean Blond free‘ yields more than 3 million results, with dozens of free torrent links, web-based streams and downloads, not to mention the SoundCloud option on page 1. In an earlier anti-piracy report, Google claimed that searches for music containing words like ‘free,’ ‘mp3,’ and ‘torrent’ are rare. At least in comparison to simpler searches like ‘Frank Ocean Blond’.
More as this develops.
Am I losing it…?
I tried listening to this record and to my ears it was awful…
sounds like some b-grade demo tape… I couldn’t hear any decent hooks or
catchy melodies over interesting chord movements..
Then there’s a Drake sound-a-like track..
Can someone please explain what I am missing as I just don’t get it…
At least with the Max Martin songs I can immediately hear the hooks and the songs have super catchy chorus’s…
Why should we even care? His music is just awful, unlistenable. Even if I got paid, I wouldn’t listen to such bad quality music.
The reason to care is that this problem of leaks and piracy affects all music, good and bad.
No, it doesn;t affect artists in general, only those artists who are still selling their music. The vast majority of music released today is free, it can no longer be pirated.
It’s just amateur rubbish.. In fact it’s the worst piece of rubbish I wasted time preview listening on iTunes.
If I was head of the company I’d get someone else to take over in the position of front page real estate curation / placement making.
He’s no Billy.
HAHAHA McMusic cheap disposable assembly line maybe change an onion or pickle or two hold the mayo, and you got an album…….
he better be great live so he doesn’t have to wind up back at the car wash
and still… despite the hate from the elitist on this site, it’s expected to sell 225,000 to 250,000 copies and top the Billboard 200
The comments on the quality of the music are irrelevant; we should all be concerned as this sort of leakage and piracy devalues all music, good or bad.
We shouldn’t be concerned at all. Most of the songs released today are available for free, they cannot be pirated.