August 1, 2008 10:54 AM PDT
How not to promote your band: fake BitTorrent leaks
This is truly pathetic. A couple weeks ago, L.A. rock band BuckCherry issued a press release (since removed) complaining that their latest single had been leaked on BitTorrent. But a little clever research by TorrentFreak revealed that the leaker had only uploaded one track--this one--to BitTorrent, and had the same IP address as someone who'd edited the band's Wikipedia entry. When TorrentFreak e-mailed the band's manager to ask his opinion, lo and behold, the IP address matched.
Leaking a track is a valid way of getting promotional buzz for a new album. But complaining about it indicates a certain desperation--like people weren't even interested in the leaked track, so the artist had to call attention to it. Oops.
Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattrosoff. 
