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    8 Reasons You Won't Hear "Yeezus" Early

    UPDATE: Aaaaaaaand it leaked. Kanye West is basically the only major star who has figured out how to keep his music from leaking to the internet.

    1. Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne is the only major album of the past few years to NOT leak. If anyone can keep a highly anticipated album from leaking, it's Kanye.

    2. Kanye's camp stopped sending versions of tracks to each other by email or any other online service.

    3. He also stopped working in regular recording studios, choosing to instead set up small studios in hotel rooms and other locations where he could keep out anyone besides trusted inner circle collaborators.

    4. Kanye keeps works-in-progress tracks on password-protected external hard drives that are locked away in Pelican briefcases, never on laptop hard drives.

    5. West had both Watch the Throne and Yeezus mastered only a week before release to keep the window for final recordings to fall into the wrong hands as brief as possible.

    6. Many albums are leaked around the time CDs are manufactured or shipped, but West made sure Watch the Throne was sent to a secured CD plant after its digital release.

    7. Unlike Watch the Throne, Yeezus will be out on CD the same day it's being released digitally. There's a good chance that someone could leak it in this stage, but big box chains make it difficult for this to happen.

    This user on the KanyeToThe.com message board explains:

    Kanye also is not allowing pre-sales of his album on iTunes or any other retailer. Other artists, like Daft Punk and The National, have had their pre-order pages on iTunes hacked in the recent past.

    UPDATE, June 14th: Well, that was fast...despite all of the above measures, Yeezus has popped up online and is being rampantly downloaded four days before it officially releases.