Beck-spiracy

There have been now two new Beck tracks "leaked" in the last week, both available only briefly. A couple of days ago yours truly posted the YouTube link to Beck's "Think I'm in Love," which was promptly pulled from YouTube only hours later (likely due in large part to the copious stream of traffic coming from this very Blogspot address). Prior to that, his Beckness briefly posted and prompty removed the new track, "Cell Phone's Dead" on his very own Beck.com.

You have to admire the job his marketing and P.R. people are doing -- truly innovative work. First they get uber-indie tastemakers, Pitchfork, to essentially re-run their press release annoucing the debut of "Cell Phone's Dead." Pitchfork is one of my first stops each morning and by the time I visited Beck.com at 9am the track had already been removed. Naturally I was eager to hear this song so I searched all over the [brand spanking new] website but couldn't find the new music.

Then, only days later "Think I'm in Love" leaks on to the ultra-hot, mega-blogged YouTube.com with a full motion, albeit ultra low-budget video. Did some fan get their hands on the leaked track and put this vid together? I can't remember, but wasn't Beck lipsynching? That would rule out fan involvment obviously. I highly, HIGHly doubt this is the work of a fan. Nevertheless, the video was removed from YouTube, and the page was updated with the following statement:

"This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner RIAA because its content was used without permission."

So, Beck, even if this album doesn't break any new ground at least it can go down as a textbook how-to in online guerilla music marketing. Well done, chap.