Radiohead's Thom Yorke releases $6 solo album Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes' on BitTorrent Bundle site in new digital distribution trial
Thom Yorke, the frontman of Radiohead, has announced he will be distributing his solo album 'Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes' via the peer to peer download service BitTorrent in an experiment to perfect digital distribution independently of iTunes and other platforms.
Thom Yorke is an outspoken figure in the music industry
The BitTorrent service, often criticised for its complicity in enabling pirates to downloaded copyrighted content, will sell the album to users for only $6, as part of a new trial designed to give artists back control of their own products.
The BitTorrent bundle will see artists receive 90 per cent of sales income with the p2p service taking in the remaining 10 per cent.
Thom Yorke said: “As an experiment we are using a new version of BitTorrent to distribute our new record. The new Torrent files have a pay gate to access a bundle of files, the files can be anything, but in this case is an 'album'.
“It's an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around but if it works well it could be an effective way of handing some control of internet commerce back to people who are creating the work.”
The album has also been released with a music video, hosted on BitTorrent's website.
'Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes' will feature eight tracks and is available for download as of today.
The Radiohead star has been looking into alternative ways to sell his music ever since he quit Spotify claiming the streaming service does not pay enough to its artists.