Jim Carroll: How a regular guy and his large belt buckle played a role in breaking the record industry

Meet public enemy number one. For many years, the record industry was in a frenzy about who exactly was leaking their music. Everyone was a possible suspect, from the artists themselves to the music journalists who received albums in advance of release.

Such was the industry’s paranoia about the latter, onerous security measures were introduced, including individually watermarked CDs and terms and conditions more applicable to state secrets. One condition insisted that reviewers guard against random passers-by hearing the music. All this for the new Matchbox 20 album.

But it turns out that the leaks were occurring at a different part of the supply chain. The chief leaker, the man who broke the record industry, was Bennie Lydell Glover and he worked in a CD manufacturing plant in North Carolina.

In a fascinating extract from his new book How Music Got Free in the current issue of the New Yorker, Stephen Witt tells the story of Glover. "From 2001 on, Glover was the world's leading leaker of pre-release music," says Witt.

He did this by smuggling CDs out of the plant, ripping them as MP3s on to his PC and uploading the files to a gang of pirates called RNS, who did the rest. It meant the pirates had access to albums by Eminem, Jay Z, Nelly, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, Bjork, Kanye West and many more weeks before they were released. There were other leakers supplying the pirates with material, but Glover was vital because he worked at the plant that pressed CDs for Universal Music, and Universal was the leader of the pack.

What was Glover’s motivation? He got involved with the pirates to get access to their inventory of leaked movies and games, which he would then bootleg and sell to make some handy cash. By the time he was rumbled in 2007, Glover had leaked over 2,000 albums and had probably cost the record industry tens of millions of dollars.

Witt’s reportage is fascinating because it shows up just how simple it was for Glover to operate. Sure, there were security measures at the CD pressing plant – measures which were amped up as the years went by – but Glover got around them with ease. One of his wheezes involved smuggling the CDs out of the plant behind an oversized belt buckle.

In 2015, leaks still occur – look at Bjork earlier this year – but the labels deal with these now by rush-releasing the albums for download or streaming. But as long as albums are hanging around waiting to be released as part of some grand marketing plan, there will be someone somewhere with access to the music who will be tempted to leak the album into the wild. It could be a hack, a studio grunt, an artist or even, as we now know, a dude in a CD factory with a giant belt buckle on his jeans.

How Music Got Free by Stephen Witt will be published by Bodley Head in June. Read the full extract from The New Yorker here.

YOU’VE GOT TO HEAR THIS

Noveller - Fantastic Planet  
Superbly finessed solo album of softly shaped guitar and electronics' landscapes and soundscapes from Brooklyn/ Austin composer Sarah Lipstate. The kind of slow- motion widescreen elements which set a cinematic reel rolling in your mind.

ETC

Good news for fans of Matthew E White, who were wondering if the man was going to blank Ireland on his current European tour. He's to appear at a Banter words-and-music event at Dublin's Twisted Pepper on Monday May 4th. Along with an interview to be hosted by this writer, White will also perform songs from Big Inner and current album Fresh Blood. See thisisbanter.com for information.