It is enough to make any grown man cry, if they had invested the time into making it. But these sixty year old pensioners must be spitting feathers!

The first studio album from the Rolling Stones in eight years, A Bigger Bang, has been illegally posted on the internet a week before its official release.

Music fans have been able to download most of the album from several websites. The unofficial release will be short-lived given that the album is due out Monday, but it has the potential to cost the Stones millions in lost sales.

The illegally posted tracks are understood to be bootlegs of songs that have been legally broadcast on radio and the internet, including the band’s own website, since Monday.

“The first low-quality files of new Rolling Stones music were found illegally posted on Monday, the same day we began making the new album available for consumers to listen to via radio and streaming,” a spokeswoman for Virgin, the Stones’ record company, said.