The snippet of Britney Spears' new single,
"Womanizer," that leaked late last week
was apparently recorded off a conference call Jive Records held with radio programmers.
(Which would explain the tinny quality.)
That recording was made by a grunt worker at the Nashville pop station
The River who's "professionally" known as
Intern Adam [107.5 The River].
WRVW (The River) personality Intern Adam said today he has been taken off the air
for leaking the new Britney Spears' single, "Womanizer" on the radio station's Web site.
"I was the first person in the world who had this, the Britney Spears' comeback single,"
he said.
"I got excited; I got eager. I wanted to get this out there already,
so I did. And I guess I got a little too eager."
Intern Adam, whose real name is
Adam Davis (and he's not an intern),
said he doesn't yet know if he's been suspended or fired from the station
for which he's worked since 2004.
Intern Adam, 25, taped the song during a Jive Records conference call
with radio programmers and posted it on the station's Web site.
He said he never played the song on the air.
He would not comment on whether anyone else at the station knew
beforehand what he had done.
"If anyone has ever listened to The River, they know I"m
a big supporter of Britney Spears.
It's ironic that Britney's biggest supporter on the air here is off the air
because I played a Britney Spears song.
"I don't know what is going to happen next," he said.
"All I can say is bad press is better than no press when you are off the air.
Hopefully, I'm not fired. Hopefully they'll let me back."
New music getting into hands that leak it is a common issue, said Wade Jessen,
Billboard/R&R senior chart manager and director of operations in Nashville.
"If you talk to promotion people at labels, they’ll tell you that that happens all the time.
I never saw too much of it in country.
That happened a little bit when Garth Brooks was releasing singles.
"It’s incredibly easy to do in the digital age.
It's not a good thing when it happens, but it happens."
Jessen was not aware of the specifics of the Intern Adam situation,
but he says if the snippet played was a bad representation of what the music really is--
meaning either the recording was bad or the music recorded was not finished,
mixed or mastered--that it's really bad.
