Protecting Digital Promos · Jul 2, 10:32 AM

Promos have been big news lately following the arrest of a London-based DJ and reviewer for selling 150 big name pre-releases on eBay. This arrest came only days after Universal lost its court battle in the US to stop an eBay trader from reselling promo CDs (although these had been bought from second hand stores and weren’t sold pre-release). If charges are brought against the London DJ, this will be the first ever prosecution involving the sale of pre-release music in the UK. For those of us involved with promos it’s going to be interesting to see how it pans out. One thing that we were wondering already is why the reviewer wasn’t taken off the lists of those sending him stuff after the 3rd or 4th or 100th promo CD popped up in the ‘the UK’s favourite marketplace’? Do labels and promoters have a blacklist for this sort of thing?

The arrest got us thinking about the options available for protecting digital pre-release tracks; while it’s relatively easy to work out who’s responsible for a physical promo appearing on eBay, unless you watermark, it’s going to be impossible to find out who put something on Soulseek or some other P2P network. And this situation is a lot more damaging than a fan buying a pre-release CD from someone who was trusted not to sell it. (Unless of course the fan then rips the CD to Soulseek to get blogging points).

So, what’s out there to protect digital promos? (In the situations when you need them to be protected.) There are a few strategies available, from simple stuff like only giving away low quality or shortened clips to more sophisticated tactics like using watermarking. We think the only option with any legs has to be watermarking. Anything that changes how a track sounds, such as fading before the end or adding voice stamps, makes a track unusable for DJs and is going to be at least mildly irritating to reviewers. For example, web-based rock magazine Komodo Rock got very angry with a voice-stamped promo earlier this year.

Some reviewers might not even realise they had been DRM’d and blame strange fade-outs on poor performance. Maybe in this review, the fact that ‘every bloody track ends in a fade’ isn’t Cat Powers’ fault?

While watermarking doesn’t discourage the track being shared in as foolproof a way as a track with voice stamps or fades does, it doesn’t interfere with how a track should sound. And crucially it means you have a way to tell who your leak was if the track appears on P2P sites. And if that person was someone from your mailing list, you can decide what to do about it. Agree/disagree? We’d love to hear from you.

— Kate

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