Last week Luis at PMA got his hands on what were allegedly some demo tracks from the in-progress Kelly Clarkson album (not being written by Clarkson, sadly; looks like Clive Davis won out). 4 tracks, the origin of which is anywhere from being in Clarkson's personal collection to semi-official releases, found their way into Luis's hands and subsequently onto PMA, starting a full-blown comment war between the blog, the hardcore "crazy Clarkson" fans, and everyone else who felt like typing something out. The site ultimately took them down, but not before a militant commenter uploaded them himself and passed out the link.
I'm rather torn on this story. My respect for record labels is in a constant decline, so if these belong to the record label and got leaked, tough shit on them. The conspiracy theorist in me tends to believe that record labels intentionally leak some of this stuff because they know that the bloggers are right about it generating (usually) positive hype. So that explains why I generally don't have much issue picking up on leaks, especially if i know I'll be buying the music upon its release.
But many sites (including PMA and Billboard) are reporting that these demos were snagged from Clarkson herself, the work of some hacker. That's a whole new ballgame. Now we ARE looking at a story where someone stole directly from an artist; not from a multimillion dollar label that claims to be looking out for said artist. That's not much different from someone taking a saved blog post from my hard drive and claiming it as their own. For that reason, I'm NOT posting the Clarkson demos. I will admit to having them on my hard drive, mostly out of sheer curiosity. I also plan to delete them upon hearing them. Turns out that Aben Eubanks, a friend and colleague of Clarkson has asked for their removal, but the label itself has said nothing. Given the war that went on over My December, I can't say I'm surprised.
I may or may not post my opinions of the demos after I hear them. That's to come later this week. Just thought this was a story that needed to be posted.
4 New Kelly Clarkson Demos [PMA]
To Do List: Talk About Kelly Clarkson... [PMA]
Clarkson Hopes Fans 'Like' Leaked Demos [Billboard]
==TJ==
Sunday, April 6, 2008
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3 comments:
Cool post.. the demos were in fact stolen from Aben Eubanks' computer, unfortunately. PMA was not the first to get these tracks. The person who hacked into Eubanks' computer and stole the songs was a "fan" associated with one of Kelly's brazilian fan websites. That site uploaded the songs close to a month ago, and that was before anyone knew they were stolen. Naturally, the songs made their way to multiple other blogs, and on to Kelly's larger fan sites. This was the reason Aben posted a message on her fan sites and on his myspace asking people to please stop the spreading of the songs as they were stolen and not finished products. Anyway, Aben and others contacted the blogs who had the demos posted and all the blogs cooperated in removing the songs, and moderators of Kelly's fan sites were making sure the demos were not being discussed on the websites simply to stop the chatter. Somebody apparently sent the demos to PMA, who in turn posted them again, and this was when more people got notice - as this was the largest blog to post them. Then it just got out of control from there, and Rolling Stone, Blender, and Billboard picked up on it. So now Kelly has adapted the "well, it sucks, but I hope people like it" attitude - which I find great. She just realizes that there's no way for these songs to stop being spread around - so the best she can do is hope people like them, even though they are nowhere near finished products - and may never have been intended to be released. Anyway, I've gone on a complete tangent, sorry!
Oh, and one more things, these songs WERE written by Kelly!
The reason the label hasn't asked for removal of the demos is because they have nothing to do with them they don't own them. They are the property of Kelly Clarkson and Aben Eubanks who are the authors of said songs.
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