A lengthy yet interesting read over at Newyorker.com goes into great detail on the mp3 scene that emerged around the late 90’s. Specifically it focuses on key players from the scene group RNS, and just how they were able to release so many albums before their official release date. Though their calling cards were albums from Eminem, Jay-Z and many more, the group were also responsible for their various metal and rock leaks. A small sampling of their output includes the likes of Queens Of The Stone Age‘s “Rated R“, Limp Bizkit‘s “Significant Other“, Korn‘s “See You On The Other Side“, Megadeth‘s “The World Needs A Hero“, Deftones‘ self-titled album and many more.
As it turns out, the key source of the leaks, which numbered over 20,000 releases, was an intricate number of workers smuggling music out of a manufacturing plant based in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. Bennie Lydell Glover was identified as the ringleader of that part of the operation of sorts, which saw employees skirting security measures and inventory accounting through means of falsely disposing of product they claimed was defective, among other ways. Workers would dispose of product with rubber gloves wrapped around the CD’s that would stop them from being fed into a disposal machine and later smuggle them out past random security scans and the like behind belt buckles and such.
The reward for Glover was a monetary one, with the resulting access he got to pre-release media, including music, games, software, etc. allowing him to bootleg various material around his hometown and supplement his income. The F.B.I. eventually caught up with most of the high level members of the group, with some serving time and some being acquitted. If you’ve got the time and want to learn just how it all went down, dig in at Newyorker.com.
