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Why Do Artists Have Unreleased Tracks Instead Of Flooding The Reddit

Emily Johnson
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why do artists have unreleased tracks instead of flooding the reddit

What exactly is unreleased music? Well, it’s music that was once recorded — yes, actually recorded — but never officially released. Why? Different reasons happen: something the label didn’t like, the artist changed their mind, or it just got forgotten. Yeah, seriously — sometimes tracks just sit dead weight in someone’s folders. Let’s be honest, who doesn’t love rare stuff?

Here’s a secret — these tracks often are more interesting than the ones playing everywhere on playlists. Really — tired of the usual hits? These hidden songs are like a secret menu at a café you can find if you know where to look. Plus, fans love this raw material. They say: “I want to hear how the artist thinks, not how they position themselves.” Not all tracks are perfect, no doubt, but it’s exactly that imperfection that gives the thrill. Imagine this: you listen to a recording where you can hear a budding genius move that later turns into a hit.

Feel that magic? Here’s where the fun begins. First, social networks and forums — a goldmine. People share links there, sometimes the quality is meh, but still — you can find a lot of interesting stuff. Also, there are tons of services that help gather playlists and transfer music from one platform to another — like MusConv. It’s a cool tool if you want to collect all your “rare stuff” in one place without constantly jumping from site to site.

And yeah, don’t forget AudioModify — a service that can turn words into songs and make creative covers. With it, it’s just fun — you can make your own version of a track if you want. That’s how the world got so much bigger for music, easy and simple. A subject that doesn't often come up when we talk about pop music and our favorite artists is the pressure to produce material. When Spotify's CEO Daniel Ek suggested that musicians needed to work harder and could no longer release music every "three to four years" and still make a living with their work, the backlash from... Songs, after all, are not widgets.

They take time and creative energy. Which is why unfinished and unreleased songs by famous, successful artists capture the imagination. With all the time, energy, and expense involved in writing and recording a song, the pressure to release anything that's even close to finished must be incredible. The decision to hold a song back for years or even decades — like the songs on this list — means there's a story behind each of them. The reasons why these legendary songs were never finished by bands and solo artists are as varied and unexpected as the songs themselves, but one thing is certain: The chances that any of them... In 1976, the Eagles released Hotel California, an album that became a massive hit for the band, spawning multiple hit singles and selling millions of copies.

The band spent months working on the album and then spent months on the road supporting it with a tour. The incredible success of Hotel California strained the already fragile relationships in the band, and the pressure they felt to match or exceed that success was immense. As Ultimate Classic Rock reports, the band went into the studio in 1977 to begin recording what would be their last album before their first breakup, The Long Run, intending it to be a... Eighteen long months later, unable to come up with any more quality songs, they essentially gave up and released what they had. There is one song that has become infamous due to its unusual title: "You're Really High, Aren't You." In an interview with Rolling Stone, drummer and lead singer Don Henley called that "one of the many joke titles we came up with." It's not unusual for bands to give unfinished songs placeholder...

According to Fox News, guitarist Don Felder says the song was closer to finished than Henley remembers, but they gave up on the album before it could be finished. In other words, the band broke up before the song could be completed. He eventually reworked it into the title song on the soundtrack to the film Heavy Metal. Every musician's worst nightmare is to wake up one morning, just to see their hard work posted all over the internet, weeks before it was meant to be released. Ranging from Dua Lipa to Daft Punk to Playboi Carti, ‘music leaks’ have affected just about every artist. Since the transition of music from analog to digital, leaks have become increasingly more popular.

But how and why do they happen? The origins of music leaking and bootlegging began in the 1960’s after the disappearance of Bob Dylan. With a scramble to find his unreleased recordings, a trend was born. However, for decades, most sharing of unreleased music happened out of the view of the public eye, until the website Napster was released in 1999. On Napster, users could directly share downloaded music files from peer to peer. This directly led to the distribution of unreleased or leaked songs becoming very prevalent on the website.

Consequently, Napster was sued by Metallica in 2000 for the illegal distribution of their song that was meant to be played on the soundtrack for the upcoming Mission Impossible: II. Fast forward to now, where hackers, streaming errors, and unwarranted studio recordings are all different ways that an artist's music can be leaked before its official release date. For hackers, sometimes the appeal is to hold the unreleased music hostage for ransom, or sell it online. For example, in 2019 a hacker by the name of Zimbra started to leak files from alternative band Radiohead, of demos and studio recordings for their album ‘OK Computer’. In return, it is rumored that he asked for $150,000 from Radiohead to not release the recordings, and on top of that tried to sell them to fans. However Radiohead did not want to bargain with a hacker, and instead released the recordings on Bandcamp for charity.

Artists also face the threat of losing money from sales, if pirating and illegal distribution of their songs is popular. In the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, pop star Dua Lipa planned on releasing her album in mid April of 2020. Unfortunately for the star, her album was leaked in full at the end of March, causing her to push forward the release date of the album. It is speculated that this was to reduce the financial loss that would come from piracy and illegal streaming of the album. Dua Lipa then went on an Instagram live, where she grew emotional surrounding the state of her album release. The new queen of hyperpop Charli XCX has more than enough experience with music leaks, to the extent of cancelling a whole album.

In the Summer of 2017, the Google Drive folder containing 10 songs from Charli XCX’s upcoming album, was hacked off of mixing engineer Spike Stent. The album was supposed to be released just a month later in September, but ended up being scrapped all together. The album was later labeled by fans as ‘XCX World’ and is easily accessible on the internet.

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Here’s a secret — these tracks often are more interesting than the ones playing everywhere on playlists. Really — tired of the usual hits? These hidden songs are like a secret menu at a café you can find if you know where to look. Plus, fans love this raw material. They say: “I want to hear how the artist thinks, not how they position themselves.” Not all tracks are perfect, no doubt, but it’s exa...

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