Applause: Lady Gaga leak leads to anti-piracy campaign

Some of Lady Gaga's fans have supported an anti-piracy campaign after her new single appeared online.

The singer announced a "pop emergency" to nearly 40 million Twitter followers, with some responding by reporting links to streams and illegal downloads.

Applause was officially due out on 19 August but has been released a week early.

The singer confirmed the decision after claims the track was targeted by hackers over the weekend.

Shortly after the leaks started, Gaga tweeted: "Lord, in HEAVEN WHY" and "YOU JUST COULDN'T WAIT THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR ONE SATURDAY."

The 27-year-old then encouraged fans to report leaked versions of the song tweeting: "MONSTERS SPREAD THE WORD."

Supporters of the campaign started providing a link to Universal Music's piracy referral form for people to report sites hosting the track.

One follower claimed to have reported more than 500 links to the page on Twitter.

Following the response the 27-year-old singer tweeted: "Thank you for your cooperation during this pop music emergency, we applaud you!"

Live return

Applause is the lead single from Gaga's third studio album ARTPOP, which is due out in November.

Lady Gaga is due to perform for the first time since an operation on her hip later this month.

She's scheduled as the headline act at this year's MTV Video Music Awards in Brooklyn on 25 August.

The surgery forced the Poker Face singer to cancel several dates of her world tour earlier this year.

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