The Hackers Targeting Drake And Kanye Are Threatening To Leak More Music, If You Pay Up
Drake, Kanye... Maroon 5? Music Mafia want Bitcoin in return for new tunes.
The group responsible for hacking Drake’s Twitter account and leaking two unreleased Kanye West tracks is promising to release even more music — as long as you shower them in Bitcoins.
Yesterday two new Kanye tracks were released on YouTube by a group called Music Mafia. ‘Hold Tight’ featuring Young Thug and Migos is a definite banger, with a particularly spicy line from Kanye about doing coke (and other things) with Miley Cyrus. The second track, ‘Euro (Switch Hands)’, features A$AP Rocky.
It’s not clear when the music was recorded, or if it’s related to Kanye’s next album, currently titled Turbo Grafx 16. A snippet of the Young Thug and Migos cut was teased on Snapchat in February last year, suggesting the collab isn’t all that new.
Migos x Kanye??? (via Ian Connor's Snapchat) pic.twitter.com/1xO4S9EduY
— TeamKanyeDaily (@TeamKanyeDaily) February 25, 2016
The leaks included links to Music Mafia’s website, where the group is offering up more unreleased music in exchange for Bitcoins.
Who Are Music Mafia?
The hackers claiming responsibility for the leaks had kept a pretty low profile until this week. On June 2 it appears as though they hacked Drake’s Twitter account and posted a link to their website.
The tweet was deleted pretty quickly, and we didn’t hear anything from Music Mafia until yesterday when they leaked the new music. According to their website, the group has “songs from artists recorded years ago” that have never been released, as well new tracks and music videos. They also offer a service where members of the public can request exclusive leaks.
So far Music Mafia have released the two Kanye tracks, previously unreleased versions of Calvin Harris’ ‘Slide’, Future’s ‘Ransom’ and a few other songs. But they’re now promising to release more music from Kanye, Maroon 5 and PartyNextDoor, as long as people pay up.
So How Does It Work?
Music Mafia seem to trying to cash in on the buzz of the Kanye leaks and their Drake hack by offering up even more music on the proviso that people chip in.
They’ve released short snippets of four other songs and are requesting payment, in the form of Bitcoin, before dropping the full-length versions. Each song has a Kickstarter-esque funding goal attached to it, but it’s not clear how much money the group is after.
At the time of writing Music Mafia’s Bitcoin wallet is reporting five transactions and a total balance of 0.00729563 Bitcoins. That equates to slightly less than $27, suggesting there’s a healthy amount of scepticism about the group, or that fans aren’t that keen on financially rewarding hackers stealing from artists.
No one knows how Music Mafia source their music, and they aren’t about to share their secrets anytime soon. We don’t even know where the group is from. Their website is registered in the Kingdom of Tonga, but their servers appear to be hosted in Iceland, by a company specialising in secure and anonymous web hosting.
The only way to get in touch with them is through the decentralised and encrypted Bitmessage communications platform.
Junkee has contacted Music Mafia to try and find out more about the group and we’ll let you know if we hear back.