The man who broke into a vehicle belonging to a member of Beyoncé’s team and stole a flash drive containing unreleased music will spend two years in prison after accepting a plea deal.
A man who stole unreleased Beyoncé music from a team member’s vehicle has been sentenced to two years in prison after a plea deal.
The theft happened during Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour and involved a flash drive containing unreleased songs.
The case has also renewed conversations around music piracy and the ongoing risks facing the music industry.
Kelvin Evans pleaded guilty on Tuesday to several charges related to the theft, avoiding a trial that had been approaching.
Investigators say surveillance footage captured Evans breaking into a rented SUV just two days before Beyoncé’s Atlanta stop on her Cowboy Carter tour. The flash drive stolen from the vehicle contained music that had not been released to the public.
Kelvin Evans
Evans had initially pleaded not guilty and rejected an earlier plea offer in March. Prosecutors noted he is also implicated in other vehicle break-ins in the area. He had been facing up to six years in prison before accepting the reduced two-year sentence.
The incident occurred during one of the most closely watched tours in recent memory. Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé’s genre-defying country-influenced album, was released in March 2024 and debuted at number one in multiple countries, reinforcing her status as one of the most commercially dominant and culturally significant artists of her generation.
With a career spanning three decades, 32 Grammy Awards, and a catalogue that stretches from Dangerously in Love to Renaissance and beyond, Beyoncé remains the benchmark by which ambition in popular music is measured.
The Cowboy Carter tour was, by any metric, a major cultural event, which made the theft of her unreleased material a story that travelled far beyond music industry circles. The case also arrives against the backdrop of a global music piracy problem that the streaming era has failed to solve.
Beyoncé during the Atlanta stop of her Cowboy Carter tour, where the theft incident occurred.
Reports show a recorded 13.6 billion visits to music piracy sites globally, and stream-ripping (the practice of converting streaming audio into downloadable files) now affects 29 per cent of global listeners according to IFPI’s 2024 figures.
Digital piracy is estimated to cost the global creative industry over $75 billion annually, with around 70,000 music industry jobs lost in the United States each year as a direct consequence.
Crucially, piracy is rising even as legal streaming has never been more accessible, a contradiction that analysts say points to a failure in the legal ecosystem rather than a technology gap. The Evans case is a reminder that not all music theft is digital.
Man who stole Beyoncé’s unreleased music before her Atlanta show pleads guilty, gets two years
