Franz Ferdinand Frontman Speaks Out Against Leaks

Franz Ferdinand's frontman Alex Kapranos has angrily recounted how one of the band''s album got an unduly early release onto the web.

The Franz Ferdinand frontman told BBC 6 Music, "We did a show with the Arcade Fire, and we filmed it. We'd given copies of the CD out to the guys that were working the show with us. It was one of the cameramen from that show who had leaked the album. We could trace it back to him really easily, because whenever you give folk a record like that you put a watermark on it."

Kapranos later confronted the cameraman: "We gave you this record, we trusted you, you were working with us, we thought we had a good thing going on here. And he turned round and said, 'I don't believe in capitalism.' You don't believe in capitalism? Well, I won't pay you the £20,000 ($30,000) you got for doing the filming, you w-----."

On leaking, Kapranos added, "I don't like it. The people who leak it don't actually give a damn. It's purely to be the guy that did it. 'I want to be the guy that leaked the Arctic Monkeys.'"

Chief executive of the BPI, Geoff Taylor, said, "When you're preparing a release, the label and the management have to prepare a campaign. You get the music out to journalists and broadcasters in advance of the release. The most common source of leaks is somewhere in that process. Indie music suffers from this more than most."

With almost every indie album seeming to leak on to the internet weeks in advance of their proper release, it's a growing problem. Watermarking, rush releasing and streaming are the solutions currently used, but seem to have made no mark on the torrent of leaks.