A couple of years ago leaks became so common that in all but the most unusual of cases, pre-releases ceased to become ‘news’. However, this past weekend an angry reaction by one of the world’s biggest pop stars provoked a somewhat interesting response from her fans.

In November Lady Gaga will release her new album. Titled ‘ARTPOP’, it features a new single called ‘Applause’, several snippets of which were leaked onto the Internet this weekend. Perhaps needless to say, Lady Gaga wasn’t impressed.

So while just another leak is somewhat unexciting, the response by Gaga’s fans to her apparent upset changes things a little.

Rather than sharing links to the leaks far and wide as might be expected, many of Gaga’s Little Monsters have become little angels with the launch of their very own crowd-sourced anti-piracy campaign.

It isn’t clear Who started the movement, but there are now thousands of fans condemning the leak on Twitter and various blogs and fan forums, many providing a link to Universal Music’s portal where people can report sites hosting the leaked track. Add to this a retweet of the campaign by Lady Gaga herself and things really gained traction.

The response by Gaga’s fans is fairly unusual, with one claiming to have reported upwards of 500 links to Universal, with others focusing on celebrity scalps. “Just reported a Soundcloud link and Perez Hilton’s blog to UMG,” one Gaga fan wrote on Twitter.

But despite the enthusiasm, one has to question the whole episode on a number of levels.

First, we aren’t talking about a whole album leak here, or even the leak of a full single. This is the leak of a few seconds of what appears to be three different parts of the track ‘Applause’, so why is Gaga so annoyed and why are her fans so outraged to the point of helping her to get the content taken down?

These samples represent the perfect taster – just enough to get people excited but not too much so that people don’t want to buy the real thing. From a business perspective, leaving them up makes more sense than taking them down.

Second, one has to wonder how many of the Little Monsters had the self control not to click any of the links they found, if only to test what they were reporting was the real deal. One can imagine a solitary fan, hunting down these links, thinking “just one little listen by me won’t hurt.” And they’d be absolutely right.

Let’s face it – most of Lady Gaga’s fans listened to the links they found. Of course they did. And when Gaga retweeted the ‘report piracy’ link to her 39.7 million followers, did she think for an instant they would deny themselves a sneak listen to a few measly seconds of their idol’s latest work? She may as well have cut out the middle man and pasted the link there herself.

So has any harm been done? No – absolutely none whatsoever. Will Universal spend a fortune getting these links taken down? Doubtful. Straight to number one when the track’s released in a few days? Guaranteed.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The pair, aged 18 and 23, used Trojan horse software to gain unauthorized access to the computers of high-profile artists’ managers in 2009 and 2010.

Their booty included unreleased tracks by Maria Carey, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Leona Lewis and Ke$ha, tracks that made the pair $15,000 according to the prosecution.

The teenager was handed an 18-month sentence at a young offenders’ institute. The 23-year-old received an 18-month suspended jail sentence.

The 18-year-old, who called himself DJ Stolen, had earlier apologized to Lady Gaga for leaking her music.

“Dear Lady Gaga,” he wrote in Bild. “I am ashamed of what I have done. I did not think about the consequences.”

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Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Yesterday, US-based music news site Earsucker.com reported on a rather interesting Gaga leak, not a new or secret track, but her detailed itinerary from April 4th until today. The documents were leaked by one of her staff (pictures below).

In a letter dated today, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), an Australia-based anti-piracy group, began threatening Earsucker.com. They claimed that publishing the itinerary was an infringement of copyright and breach of confidentiality “which may result in significant loss and damage” to Lady Gaga. Remove the item, or else, MIPI informed the site.

Earsucker refused to comply, noting that as a US-based site they are not bound by the Australian laws MIPI cited and adding that they were not the original leaker or publisher of the material, and are further protected under journalism shields. Earsucker also issued an infringement counter-notification.

“What can I say except that a goon in a suit in Australia is no different from a goon in a suit here in the U.S. (though they get to subject their own citizens to much more draconian censorship),” Earsucker VP Stephen VanDyke told TorrentFreak.

VanDyke told us that he’s “just trying to mess with the international goons” before the US gets hit with ACTA and they are actually allowed to bring claims cross-border, adding: “I urge people to do whatever they can to harass and be a general nuisance to the censorship regimes, even if it means cross-border Internet shenanigans with folks like MIPI.”

“These people should really get a clue about the Barbara Streisand effect. I mean, now TorrentFreak can distribute the images and news of the images (everyone must know!!) and further mess with them, and who knows where this stupid itinerary photo could end up,” VanDyke concluded.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Nevertheless, Uggla insisted that Spotify is a fantastic service with a great range of music to sample. However, he felt that the fact he wasn’t getting paid was the fault of the major labels involved in the project (Sony BMG bought 5.8% of Spotify for 2,935 Euros, Universal Music got 4.8% for 2,446 euros, Warner Music paid 1,957 Euros for 3.8% and EMI pocketed 1.9% for an investment of 980 Euros), claiming that he “earned as much in six months as a BUSKER could earn in a day.”

As the dust settled on the story, many non-Swedish readers were saying “Magnus who?” and wondering if this artist’s lack of mainstream popularity was the real reason behind him earning virtually nothing. But what about big artists? What about really, really big artists with huge international appeal. Say, an artist like Lady Gaga, who has sold more than 4 million albums and shifted in excess of 20 million paid digital downloads?

According to a report today, Lady Gaga’s track “Poker Face” was one of the most popular tracks during a five month period on Spotify and was played more than a million times. So how much money does she get paid by STIM (the Swedish Performing Rights Society) for this massive achievement?

SEK 1150 – that’s around $167 or roughly 113 Euros.

Commenting on the story, Douglas Léon, better known as Swedish rapper Dogge Doggelito, said he was dismayed.

“It is totally sick. We musicians have no rights, you may not charge [for music] anymore,” adding that Lady Gaga could’ve earned more driving an illegal taxi-cab.

Swedish artist, music producer and philosopher Alexander Bard, however, said that this payment was better than Lady Gaga would have achieved from her music being available via The Pirate Bay, noting that the amount was “…more than zero.”

Technically Bard is absolutely right, but let’s be honest – Lady Gaga would blow the money she earned from STIM in a 20 minute hotel mini-bar bender. Looking at the overall downloads, let’s face it, per track she earned pretty much near to nothing from both services.

While Spotify is to be commended for having the guts to try something new, for providing a truly wonderful service and for having achieved such a lot technically in a such a short space of time, one can’t help but wonder if it is ever going to bring in decent money for the artists.

After all, aren’t these the very people the music industry continually holds up as the important ones to encourage, nurture and support?

Lady Gaga’s example shows that Spotify’s business model needs some work, and the labels seem to agree on this. The US launch of the service has been delayed earlier this week, allegedly because of concerns about Spotify’s ability to upgrade free users to paid customers.

“We think Spotify is a great service but they’re going to have to convince us they can convert enough people from free to paid subscriptions to make it worth our while,” one label told the Financial Times. “As an ad-supported service the economics don’t work at all.”

Despite the startup troubles for Spotify the reviews from users, many of which were avid file-sharers, are still extremely positive. The service recently launched an iPhone app that allows users to play the tracks on the go, with or without an Internet connection, which many saw as the missing link. Now all they have to do is come up with a plan to actually make money.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.