New Eminem album surfaces online

James Delahunty
3 Nov 2004 7:39

Rapper Eminem's new album, Encore, which is set to be released on November 16th has appeared online today, 13 days early. The album is currently being traded and distributed in many ways online, including XDCC bots on IRC, on P2P networks and many BitTorrent sites. This is the third major item from the entertainment industry to appear online in about a month, after two major games, Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas both leaked before their official release date. It seems that Internet release groups are becoming more and more of a nuisance to the entertainment industry, demonstrating their skills in beating several copy protections and acquiring works long before they are due to be released.
It's not a major thing to see albums appear online in MP3 format, but this one in particular is interesting after rumors were circulating online that there were "plans" for this album that would prevent mass piracy of it. The group responsible for the release has left some comments packed with it...

Guess Who's Ripped, Ripped Again? It's
RNS And We Bring A Friend!
He is familiar to us and all of you as
well. We bring you the new Eminem album
to ring in the end of 2004 and the
start of 2005! Consider this your early
Christmas present from RNS.

As well as the main CD, the group has also released a bonus CD containing three more tracks. It will be interesting to see some later comments on this release from Recording Industry. Some have made claims that the major success of the third Eminem album, The Eminem Show was due to many of the tracks appearing on P2P networks. Downloaders who got these early tracks claim it made them go out and buy the album when it was released.