A new sheriff in cyber town.

Independents let Web Sheriff loose to plug a torrent of online pre- release album leaks

by Adam Benzine

It is every label bosses' worst nightmare - waking up one morning to discover your biggest album priority of the year has leaked ahead of its planned release date.

That nightmare became a reality for Wichita/V2 last November when Bloc Party's second album ended up online 80 days ahead of when it had been scheduled to come out.

Over an admittedly shorter timeframe, Domino has been facing similar problems with its new Arctic Monkeys album, which debuted yesterday (Sunday) at number one, while executives at fellow leading indie XL are already priming themselves for such occurrences for their new White Stripes album, even though it is not due out until June 18.

Yet for all three labels, the solution has not been to contact distributors or lawyers, sue downloaders or even to bring the albums' release dates forward. Instead they have each picked up the phone to call a new breed of web specialists rapidly emerging as something of a fourth emergency service for record companies.

Web Sheriff and Friend TMS are among the firms which specialise in stemming the flow of illegal material on the web. While this can cover films, TV shows, software applications and even libellous gossip, increasingly the two businesses are focusing their efforts on clamping down on music leaks.