This is also a term for a specific kind of
noise leakage in an electronic system, one in which one signal "bleeds through" another while it is being played. There are several different ways this can happen.
One way bleedthrough occurs is when a multi-track analog magnetic tape recording is playing, and one channel's data "bleeds through" to adjacent tracks. This is caused by one set of heads not being in proper alignment. If the record heads were improperly aligned, then the tape is ruined as the bleedthrough will occur on every machine that the tape is played on. If the playback heads are the ones in misalignment, then the phenomenon is restricted to that machine, and the tape is OK. This is not to be confused with print-through, which occurs in magnetic tape stored for long periods of time. In print-through, the magnetic signal on a tape imprints a ghost of itself into the tape above and below it. This causes one to hear a faint echo of those parts of the track when the tape is played.
Another way is when a radio is picking up a signal, and gets interference from an adjacent radio channel. This has the same root causes as in tape bleedthrough. On the front end it is because the broadcaster has poorly tuned the transmitter, causing the signal to stray or be so broad that it leaks into adjacent signal space reserved for another broadcast. On the back end it is caused by the receiver not tuning itself properly. This phenomena is similar to, but not the same as, multipath ghosting. Ghosting is caused by radio signal reflections from nearby objects such as skyscrapers in a city environment arriving at the reciever at different times, causing echoes in the signal.