The Wall Street Journal has a report about accusations that rock band Buckcherry leaked its own album to file-sharing sites and then complained about piracy in an attempt to gain publicity.

Form the Wall Street Journal:

While entertainment companies decry filesharing, they nevertheless frequently use it as a tool to market music or gauge the popularity of their offerings. Radio stations use information on which songs are most trafficked online when deciding what to play. And it is increasingly common for musicians and their record companies to give away some or all of an album online before its commercial release, albeit usually through their own Web sites, rather than through filesharing services.

After “Too Drunk. . .” appeared on the Internet early last month, Buckcherry wrote in a July 3 MySpace posting that “we hate it when this s- happens, because we want our FANS to have any new songs first.” In that post, the band provided a link that allows fans to download a copy of the song, and soon after posted a music video on its Web site. A July 22 news release from Atlantic quoted the band making the same complaint.

The song quickly gained traction on the Internet, and some tech-savvy fans grew suspicious that the leaked song and the complaints had been a successful exercise in generating publicity.