Born In '88

Watch the Throne did not leak primarily because of the release and recording strategy. An album can leak due to a myriad of reasons but primarily the culprit is, the tracks pass through too many hands. Jay-Z insisted on recording the album in-person and reserved blocks of rooms at hotels exclusively for the album’s recording and production, i.e. “no mailing it in.” It caused delays but in addition to increased authenticity, it decreases leak risks. In the past, albums have been prone to leak during the mastering process by engineers. An easy fix to this is to use a trusted, veteran producer. In the case of Watch the Throne, Mike Dean was their guy. If an album has made it through recording and production leak free, high risk lies in the hands of the press and the CD manufacturing plant. 

The audiences at the Watch the Throne listening parties were carefully curated to ensure only trusted professionals were in attendance; But when blogger DDot Omen snuck into a recent listening session and attempted to leak snippets of each track on his blog, he wasn’t celebrated by the music community, but instead berated. The culture surrounding “Watch the Throne” made it clear that if one were to leak the album, they would be nobody’s hero and antagonized immediately.

To avoid a leak via the plant, Jay and West used a graduated release strategy. They chose to first exclusively release a digital deluxe version to iTunes on Aug. 7. The physical copies of the LP will exclusively be available at Best Buy on Aug. 12 for the first two weeks of the release. Fewer web and brick and motar retailers means fewer hands. But even more, targeting the source of a leak should one occur becomes easier. As the result of excellent strategy, Watch the Throne became one of the first albums in a long time to release leak-free.

Why didn’t Watch the Throne leak?