Adnan Sami's entire 'yet to be launched' new album leaked on internet, artist and music company in a state of shock

This has happened to only two artistes Taylor Swift and Kanye West, and never to an Indian musician. Saturday 12 January would go down as a ‘dread’-letter day in music-maker Adnan Sami’s life. Adnan woke up on that fateful day to discover to his horror that his entire new album to be released at month-end, had been leaked on the internet. “Not 1, not 2, not 5 songs. But all 11 songs from my new album Press Play were out on 60-80 websites in no time at all. It was a frigging nightmare,” says Adnan with a shudder. The music company Universal Music and Adnan have no choice but to now prepone their entire marketing and release plans by almost a fortnight and to put the album out in the market with immediate effect. Universal Music’s Managing Director Devraj Sanyal who was in transit in Dubai on the way to Shanghai says he and his music company are in a shock. “God knows how it happened. Ever since I took over at Universal Music I’ve released albums of approximately 40 artistes. Such a full-album leakage has, to my knowledge happened only twice before to Taylor Swift and Kanye West in the recent past, and never to an Indian artiste. It could have been leaked out from Adnan’s studio, or our company or then from the offices of any of the partners that we on board. The points of exit are so many, we don’t know whom to blame. And really, playing the blame game won’t help us deal with the crisis.” Looking at the brighter side Devraj says the full-fledged leakage of the album is sign of its impending popularity. “Only when the album is really going to pop does such extreme sh*t happen. It proves how desperately people want the album. That’s why we’ve quickly changed our release plans for Adnan’s album. We had to move very quickly. It’s immediately available at all retail shops from today (Monday) itself. Our partners have also moved forward. We’ve preponed the official release by a week. I’m shortening my visit to Shanghai to be back as soon as possible. It’s well worth the effort because let me tell you Adnan’s new album is something else.” Adnan however is not as forgiving as his music company. He had tall plans for his album’s release at month-end. And that included inviting the two legendary Mangeshkar sisters Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle together on any public platform for the first time, to release the album. Seething in rage Adnan says, “It’s all fallen through. We had big plans for the album. They vamoosed into thin air when on Facebook on Saturday I suddenly had people telling me they liked various songs on my new album. I was like, ‘Where did they hear my songs?’ It took me a while to figure out that all the 11 songs had been leaked on the internet. Within hours 60-80 websites were playing the songs. You want to tell me this won’t affect my music sales? Sorry, I don’t buy that.”