Stop your songs from leaking

Even though the illegal downloading of music has decreased significantly in the streaming age, it still happens frequently that music is made available via dubious channels. Of course it’s especially annoying if your song is already circulating before it’s officially available. We’ve received several reports that a song has already been shared on Instagram or sent in WhatsApp groups a few hours before it’s officially released.

One of the main reasons is that the songs are mostly released at midnight in all countries. This means, for example, that a song is available eight hours earlier in Sydney or even ten hours earlier in New Zealand than in Central Europe. Enough time to leak a song.

Thanks to a new feature on iGroove, this can now be easily prevented and leaks are a thing of the past.

When creating your release you can now specify whether it should appear after “Local Time” or “Global Time”. What does this mean exactly?

Local Time

The release is published at midnight in every country.

Examples:
Berlin: Local time Friday 00:00 / CET (Central European Time) Friday 00:00
Los Angeles: Local time Friday 00:00 / CET Friday 09:00
Sidney: Local time Friday 00:00 / CET Thursday 16:00

This means that the listener in Sydney can hear a song eight hours earlier than the one in Berlin, but the fan in Los Angeles can only hear it nine hours later.

Global Time

The release is published worldwide at exactly the same time, so a listener in Sydney can’t hear the release in front of a fan in Berlin (or even leak it).

Examples:
Berlin: Local time Friday 00:00 / CET Friday 00:00
Los Angeles: Local time Thursday 15:00 / CET Friday 00:00
Sidney: Local time Friday 08:00 / CET Friday 00:00

Every listener worldwide gets access to a song at exactly the same time. While nothing changes for the listener in Berlin and he can still listen to the track from midnight, the fan in Los Angeles now has the song available at 3 pm the day before, while in Sydney you have to wait until 8 am.

Currently, the Global Time feature is only available for Spotify, Google Play and Amazon. As soon as more shops offer this option, we will add it.

It is also important to know that we cannot guarantee that a song will be available exactly at midnight. The release is up to the shops and iGroove has no influence on this. In most cases, however, the song will be available at the time you requested.

Do you have any questions about preventing leaks?

Then contact our support at [email protected] or write us in the chat.